One Agenda for Fairer State Taxes

The good folks at the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy have proposed a series of measures to produce a fairer state tax system and ensure adequate revenues for New York to provide a sound basic education to every student in the state.

Some of the key recommendations are:

-- Making the personal income tax more progressive, helping to offset the regressivity of New York's state and local sales and property taxes.

-- Making up for declining corporate tax revenues -- which contribute only half as much to the state's economy as they did twenty-five years ago -- by broadening New York's corporate income tax base.

-- Modernizing New York's regressive sales and excise tax system by broadening it to include more goods and services and providing tax credits to low-income taxpayers.

-- Restructuring New York's regressive property tax, which hits low and middle income taxpayers most heavily, as they are based on home values rather than income levels.

Worth checking out the press release summary here and the full report here.