Millionaires And Other Rich People Protest Shared Sacrifice

Not surprisingly, as soon as the State Senate started to seriously consider raising taxes on the wealth the opposition sprang up to fight it. Now that Senator Schneiderman and other advocates of the Fair Share Plan are within ten votes of raising taxes on the well-to-do, the nervousness of their opposition shows through in the mailer they are sending out.

From Taxpayers For An Affordable New York:

The Working Families Party believes that you are not paying your fair share and they are pressuring your State Senator to increase your income taxes. Amazingly, despite what we have learned these past months, they want New York to continue to spend more then it has and they want you to pay for it. They call it a "millionaire tax" even though the taxes of every family with an income of more than a couple of hundred thousand dollars could be raised by 20 to 50 percent.

Governor David Paterson has said "My belief is (that raising income taxes) is an almost automatic formula for losing population in the state and losing job creation."

Mayor Michael Bloomberg called this plan a "crazy idea". He said "You can't tax people who can move... the city would end up losing its tax base."

Families that earn more than $200,000 comprise only 4% of taxpayers but they pay 54% of the taxes. It seems to us that you already pay your "Fair Share".

Nonetheless, the State Senate may yield to the propaganda and half-truths and pass this tax hike. Together we can stop them. Please click the "Take Action" link and email your State Senator today. Tell your State Senator "I already pay too much in taxes! Manage the budget, cut wasteful spending and don't raise our taxes."

Ah, propaganda and half-truths...where shall we begin. Well technically this isn't just a millionaire's tax, that was the initial idea floated by some groups, but the fair share plan is clearly laid out by it's advocates as starting with incomes at $250,000. That would $50,000 more than the numbers that TFAANY goes by.

That twenty to fifty percent increase they talk about is pulled from thin air. The model has an increase of 1.4% for those that make from a quarter to a half-million, a 2.12% raise for those that make up to a million and a 3.45% raise for those that make more than that. Right now all New Yorkers pay 6.85% of their income to the state, regardless of how much that paycheck provides. So those that make a million dollars will go from paying $68,500 to $103,000. In all, that raises an additional $6 billion for the state and it only comes from the top 3.2% of taxpayers. TFAANY might want to amend their name so that excludes the other 96.8% of us who want a budget that asks everyone to give and not just those that struggle to get by.

Get informed and learn more at FairShareReform.com to see what the plan really entails.