“When I say ‘Tax the rich’, you say ‘Seize our future!’, okay? Good. Louder.”
Amplified by a bullhorn, local assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha leads a chant on North Front Street in Uptown Kingston.
Her intended crowd is a tidy group, just a fraction of the turnout expected at the original “Tax the Rich, Fill the Cuts” rally, moved to Saturday because of flood warnings and torrential downpours throughout the Hudson Valley.
“We should have held this over across the street from the farmers’ market,” a rally supporter in a pork-pie hat groused. “That would have increased the turnout.”
He had a point. Kingston’s Saturday market is always crowded, and most of those drawn to it nurture at least the appearance of tolerance towards progressive causes.
If a bagpipe player can busk and wail at the market borders, why not a politician with a bullhorn and an outstretched hand?
Taxing the rich is a perennially popular slogan in American politics. The impetus for this most recent call for wealth redistribution is the billions of dollars which the most recent federal spending plan will cut from an assortment of New York’s health and human services.
“Because this is a ten-year spending plan, by the time all of the provisions have kicked in,” said 103rd District assemblymember Shrestha, “the state will lose around $10 billion annually.”
The solution to the crisis, said Shrestha and other speakers at the rally such as county executive Jen Metzger, is to convene a special session of the legislature in Albany in order to address the new budget shortfalls.
“This year already, we have a $750-million deficit that we now need to respond to,” said Shrestha. “We cannot start to raise new revenues until next year’s budget — April 1, 2026. If we’re lucky.”
If the legislature can be coaxed back to Albany, Shrestha will have a list of revenue-raisers at ready.
– A one-percentage-point increase in personal income tax for those earning over $250,000 a year, which she estimates would generate $4 billion a year.
– Another $5 or $6 billion a year could be earned if a one percent sales tax were applied to business services.
– A low tax rate on pass-through businesses (businesses structured so the profits, losses and assets of the business owner are reported on private income taxes to avoid corporate taxes) would deliver another $9 billion.
– She’d also like to see inheritances over $250,000 taxed.
These are all substantial appetizers. As a main course, Shrestha would like to see a raise in the tax rate on long-term capital gains, a progressive tax rate on high earners, and the holy grail among all these policies, an increase on New York’s top corporate tax rate. Currently at 7.5 percent, the top tax rate applies to corporations which report profits of $5 million or more. That rate puts New York 11th down on the list behind all but one of its Northeastern neighbors. New Jersey is at the top of that list with a top corporate tax rate of 11.5 percent. Connecticut, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maryland, Washington DC, Vermont, Delaware, Maine and, Pennsylvania also levy higher corporate tax rates than New York.
“People hear our current [state] budget is $253 billion,” said Shrestha. “It may sound like a lot of money, but not if you look at it as a percentage of the gross state product number, which was $2.3 trillion in 2024.”
Wouldn’t higher taxes cause the well-to-do to move out of state?
“There’s a myth that higher personal income taxes make the rich flee New York,” Shrestha said. “The data does not show that at all. Ultimately, the wealthy live wherever they want, and New York City is the type of city where rich people want to live.”
Shrestha wagers business CEOs threatening to pack up the store are all bluster. Shunning a huge and wealthy market like New York State, whatever the top corporate tax rate, is not an option. Rolling out an advertising campaign in Des Moines, Iowa, doesn’t lend a brand the same caché as being featured on the side of a building in Times Square, where Paris and London and even Hong Kong can see it.
“To be honest, they don’t want us coming after their personal wealth,” said Shrestha, “but they’re more than happy to pay a tax on their profits.”
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