Hochuls sneaky MTA tax hike is a job-killing train wreck

Gov.Hochul’s latest job-killing tax hike, like the subway it funds, will mostly run beneath the surface. The state-controlled, perennially cash-strapped transit authority is still hunting for ways to fund its $68 billion five-year capital plan.In the recently agreed-upon state budget, Gov.

Hochul and lawmakers have obliged by hiking a tax charged to employers on most downstate payrolls, the Payroll Mobility Tax. Introduced in 2009 in response to that year’s MTA funding crisis, the PMT has become an important and fast-growing part of the agency’s budget.Its expansion stems largely from its obscurity: Absent from workers’ pay stubs, it carries far less risk of political blowback than a direct income levy would pose.But it’s a tax on their income all the same, reliably raking in billions the agency uses to float bonds that finance capital projects. This isn’t the first time Hochul has turned to the PMT to mend the MTA’s shortfalls.Two years ago, when the top PMT rate was 0.34%, she spiked it to 0.60% for city employers.(It was left unchanged in the downstate suburban counties — Rockland, Dutchess, Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk.)That brought in another $1.1 billion a year to the MTA, for a grand total of around $3.1 billion in 2024. Thanks to Albany’s latest deal, companies in the city with payrolls of $10 million or more will see their rates go from 0.6% to 0.895% — a 49% increase, and roughly 2½ times what it was just two years ago.

 Don’t be fooled by the small percentages — it adds up.A city firm with a $10 million payroll paid $34,000 in PMT before the 2023 budget deal, pays $60,000 today, and will soon pay $89,500.In just two years, that difference is the price of an entry-level job.And it’s on top of the myriad other taxes New York’s employers shoulder. The rate for similarly sized suburban firms will rise to 0.635%, almost double what they’re paying now. All told, the hike will generate an additional $1.4 billion for th...