Another Millionaire’s Tax – Don’t They Get It?

Let’s say you owned a successful local business with 25 full-time employees. Or maybe you’re a manager for a Fortune 50 company managing a staff of 50 in a city, how would you expect to be treated by the local government?

Would you be expect to be treated as a leader who has invested and supported the community, or would you rather be treated as a someone with deep pockets who can be tapped into as an additional government revenue source?

Marsha Kramer from wcbstv.com reports on a proposed millionaire’s tax that would help fund New York Cities mass transit system. Don’t they get it? These millionaires already pay to fund most of the federal, state and local programs that are out there and they are unique in the fact that many of them can move and work in tax-friendly states. Massachusetts is learning the lesson, over tax people and they start to leave.

Democrats’ Answer To Congestion Pricing: Tax Anyone Working In State Making $1 Million-Plus

ALBANY (CBS) ― Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan may be dead, but Assembly Democrats do have a plan to raise money for mass transit: tax the rich.

It’s what Albany calls a “millionaire’s tax.”

Yes, billionaires like Bloomberg will ante up, too.

Under the plan, people who earn over $1 million in New York state will pay an income tax surcharge of about 3/4 of 1 percent for five years. In all, it would raise over $5 billion for mass transit.

Supporters say that of the 75,000 affected taxpayers, about 35,000 don’t live in New York.

“They could be ballplayers at Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium, Madison Square Garden,” Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver told CBS 2 HD. “They could be Wall Street people who live in Greenwich, Conn., or Princeton, N.J.”

Just feels right to have the government legally steal money from all of those greedy baseball players doesn’t it? And if you think Derek Jeter will only have to pay that 1 percent for five years, he’ll get his when we all find out that we’re going to need another billion or so for some other “maintenance” project in 2014.

Does it matter much to Jeter? Probably not, since mega-sports stars are basically corporations. They really do not pay taxes, if you raise their tax rate they just go to the fans to collect more salary.

Of course, commuters seem to be all for the idea. If nailing those rich folks for 1 percent is cool, why not just take 15 percent and fund more stuff that everyone wants? Yeah! Tax the rich people! They have plenty! It’s not fair they make so much!

We’ll see how fair you think it is when your boss chooses to pay that 1 percent tax instead of the Christmas bonus next year or worse, moves his operations out of the state because the cost of doing business is too damn high! If he’s really rich, maybe he’ll just stop being an entrepreneur and just live off his dividend checks. Pink slip city.

What’s even more priceless is the comments by Richard Ravitch, chairman of the MTA.

Although Bloomberg wouldn’t support the so-called “millionaire’s tax,” Ravitch is open to it.

“Any revenue – any hockable, borrowable revenue – is a good thing,” he said. “I take it any way the Legislature wants to give it to me.”

Any way chairman? Borrowable? Dude, are you planning to give it back? Guess your just fine with legalized theft.