Thiele: Make feds pay for higher taxes at ballot box
Assemblyman Fred Thiele Jr. (I-Sag Harbor) is encouraging voters to turn out elected officials who support raising their taxes.
His reference is to the new federal tax law that penalizes New Yorkers who are faced with a $10,000 cap on what they can deduct in state and local taxes from their federal filings. State legislators and local officials on Shelter Island as well as in other municipalities have been searching for ways to work around the cap, but have come up with solutions that are so complicated they resemble “Rube Goldberg contraptions,” Mr. Thiele said.
Administering any of those solutions would be “a nightmare” for local governments and school districts, he said.
Councilwoman Amber Brach-Williams, who has been tracking the federal government’s responses for her Town Board colleagues, said she received a notice from the Treasury Department that indicated an advisory would be forthcoming indicating that the Internal Revenue Code would block efforts to circumvent the new tax code limits.
Mr. Thiele noted that back in January he predicted that the federal tax law would be adjusted to ensure the impact on New Yorkers and others in high tax states wouldn’t avoid the cap.
He noted that the federal law will be particularly onerous for Long Island residents.
“Most Long Islanders are getting screwed on income taxes by Washington, which will become even more evident on April 15, 2019,” Mr. Thiele said.
The remedy, the legislator said, isn’t state legislation or a lawsuit, but a solution voters could impose at the ballot box as they did when the MTA tax hit East End employers back in 2010.
