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A Few Clouds Governor Cuomo brings good news to taxpayers
Signs bill to reduce MTA payroll tax, cut taxes for middle class
Small-business owners of Long Island, rejoice, for your tax load just got a little lighter. Before a standing-room-only crowd at the Cornwell Avenue School in West Hempstead on Monday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill reducing the Metropolitan Transportation Authority payroll tax, providing relief for more than 290,000 small businesses and 410,000 self-employed people throughout the state.
The $250 million tax reduction is part of Cuomo’s comprehensive plan to revitalize the state’s economy by creating jobs and cutting taxes for middle-class New Yorkers. The Legislature passed the Middle Class Tax Cut and Job Creation bill during an extraordinary session on Dec. 7, hailing it as a burden-lifting measure.
“Small businesses are New York’s growth engine, and this tax reduction will help create jobs and get our state’s economy back on track without jeopardizing funding for the MTA,” Cuomo said.
Some 80 percent of small businesses, including all elementary and secondary public and private schools, will benefit from the tax reduction, according to Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre), who accompanied the governor to the Cornwell Avenue School. “That probably includes every mom-and-pop store in every single one of out downtown … business communities that are struggling to make ends meet and to create jobs,” Skelos said. “We are all very confident that they will now invest within their business and create more jobs and hire more employees.”
More than 37,260 small businesses in Nassau County and 34,700 in Suffolk are among those that will be benefit from the tax reduction.
In addition to the reduction of the MTA payroll tax, which was imposed in the spring of 2009, Cuomo’s plan included the elimination of tax indexing by adjusting tax brackets and deductions, investments in infrastructure improvement, particularly roads and bridges, and a middle-class tax cut that provides $690 million in tax relief and will result in the lowest tax rate the middle class has paid in 58 years.
