Cuomo's Whack Tax Plan a Boon to Carpetbagging Out-of-Staters Here

Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Tax-Free New York proposal will be, if passed by the State legislature, a plan to favor corporations who move to New York at the expense of those who are already here.

It is like robbing your old friends to buy some new friends who you think will help you more.

Cuomo is proposing to lure out of state, high-tech companies and entrepreneurs by waiving business and property taxes and even state income taxes for their employees for up to 10 years if they move to New York and partner/rent with a college campus under what he calls his "Tax-Free NY" proposal.

At the end of the day, Cuomo's plan is simply a giveaway to certain businesses and will create an unlevel playing field. Businesses that stuck it out in this state will continue to pay the highest taxes in the nation, while their direct competitors in other states can move here and compete with them tax free.

The newly transplanted tax-free companies can even hire workers who would go five years without paying state income taxes.  This of course would allow the employers to pay their employees less.

Meantime, people and companies who already live in New York would foot the bill for services for the new tax free companies.

All told, the foolish plan would put 120 million square feet across the state into tax-free zones. That's equal to all the office space in Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse combined.

"It's big, it's bold," Cuomo told the editorial board of The Post-Standard and Syracuse Media Group.

It's also unfair.

Cuomo's plan makes for good headlines but, at the end of the day, Tax-Free (but not for me) New York will just be another source of inequity in the tax system, another way to punish companies that stayed in New York.