The Dutchess County Fair Tax Petition

Are you a Dutchess County resident who's tired of paying higher and higher local taxes and fees while our county services remain underfunded?

Join these Town of Clinton residents-- Jonas Aarons, Glen and Sarah Love-Burger, Chris and Ellen DiFrancesco, Ed and Linda Faber, Larry Freedman, Suzi Hieter, William Lenehan, Judy Malstrom, John and Barbara Manning, Jan Mills, Richard and Joyce Morse, Robert and Johanne Renbeck, Howard and Pauline Shapiro, Bernie and Donald Siefert, Joel Tyner, and Art Weiland-- in their efforts for tax fairness in our county-- before it's too late.

Sign the 2004 Fair Tax Plan Petition!

Some of our county's leaders this year are unfortunately contemplating these five ways to balance our 2005 budget:

1. Jacking up the county's mortgage tax (e.g., $475 more for a $200,000 home)

2. Jacking up the county's property tax (a 4\% hike on top of this year's 8\% hike)

3. Keeping the county's sales tax higher than it should be (another two years of the 23\% hike voted in two years ago)

4. Jacking up the county's vehicle registration fees (an extra $10 for vehicles under 3500 pounds; an extra $20 for vehicles over 3500 pounds)

5. Jacking up county LOOP bus fares 33\%

[Note as well that a number of county services remain drastically underfunded-- there are 40 senior citizens across the county on the waiting list for home care because our county's Office for the Aging isn't adequately funded, and there are 40 MTBE spills across the county that people living in those neighborhoods aren't being warned about because our county's Health Department isn't adequately funded (besides the fact that our homeless are turned away from shelter hundreds of times a month)!]

There's a better way find the revenue necessary to avoid the local tax and fee hikes noted above and fund county services adequately:

The richest 2\% of county residents should pay an extra 1\% on the income they make over $200,000 a year (that is, someone making $210,000 a year would only pay an extra $100 a year-- 1\% of $10,000).

The Wall Street Journal this year noted that 96\% of small business owners make less than $200,000 annually-- this plan would actually help, not hurt, small business owners in our county.

Newsday, many Nassau County business leaders, the Chair of the Tompkins County Legislature, and many in Monroe County have endorsed similar plans there; Rockland and Tompkins County Legislatures started study commissions to look at similar revenue alternatives to property tax hikes-- it's high time we moved in the same direction here.

Don't forget-- our County Legislature got permission from Albany two years ago to unfairly hike our county sales tax 23\%...There's no reason we can't ask Albany for permission to make the tax system here in our county fairer in this way as well.

Yonkers and New York City have local-level income taxes, with revenue collected by Albany through state income tax forms that is then given back to those localities-- it wouldn't be hard to add our county to that list (with only an income tax surcharge on the wealthy).

Last year Albany raised taxes on the wealthy to avoid hefty local tax hikes, and
New Jersey slashed property taxes there this year, paying for it with a miniscule tax increase on the wealthy in that state.

Note-- the richest 1\% of Dutchess County residents are now getting more than $90,000 a year in federal tax breaks compared to what they paid four years ago (CTJ.org)-- while the rest of us are getting killed with excessive property taxes that are still more than 70\% higher than the national average, according to the Citizens Budget Commission.

The richest 1\% of New Yorkers are now paying about half the income taxes to Albany as they did three decades ago under Rockefeller (when our local property taxes weren't nearly so high-- real shift to local level hadn't begun yet-- see www.fiscalpolicy.org).

The fact is that the way our tax system is NOW, that we middle income New Yorkers now pay literally about twice the state and local taxes that the richest 1\% of New Yorkers pay as a percentage of income because of unfair tax shifts to the local level over the last few decades-- it's high time we worked to restore at least just a bit of progressivity and fairness into our tax code, according to the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, as Assemblyman Kevin Cahill himself has repeatedly pointed out in his speeches at Dutchess County Democratic Committee Issues Forums over the last few years.

63\% of Americans think upper-income people are paying too little in federal taxes [Gallup poll April 2004: www.pollingreport.com/budget.htm]...and there are several polls of New Yorkers from Garin, Hart, Yang, Global Strategies Group, and Zogby over the last few years that say the same thing.