{"id":224358,"date":"2026-05-08T08:39:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T08:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/224358\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T08:39:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T08:39:08","slug":"im-a-millionaire-yes-new-york-should-raise-my-taxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/224358\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m a millionaire. Yes, New York should raise my taxes."},"content":{"rendered":"

New York is traveling down a dangerous road. Thanks to President Donald Trump\u2019s billions of dollars in funding cuts, 1 million people<\/a> across the state risk losing their Medicaid or Essential Plan coverage and 200,000 people risk losing their SNAP benefits. This means thousands of people may go hungry, develop preventable health conditions or even die.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, New York\u2019s millionaires will get a $12 billion federal tax cut<\/a> this year. But the good news is that we\u2019re not at a dead end \u2014 or at least, not yet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Next year\u2019s state budget isn\u2019t done. Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York legislators have the ability to course-correct, backfill Trump\u2019s disastrous cuts and get our state onto a more sustainable path.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s even better news is that it won\u2019t be hard for Hochul to do so. The solution is simple, and it\u2019s staring her right in the face: Tax New York millionaires like me more.<\/p>\n

One of the main reasons Hochul has opposed<\/a> raising taxes on rich New Yorkers is that she believes they will move to lower-tax states if she does so. But study after study has demonstrated that millionaire tax flight is, for the most part, a myth. New York actually gained thousands<\/a> of new millionaires over the past two years despite tax increases<\/a> on ultra-rich individuals and highly profitable corporations that state lawmakers enacted in 2021.<\/p>\n

The numbers<\/a> show that the people actually leaving the Empire State in droves are working- and middle-class New Yorkers in search of more affordable child care and housing.<\/p>\n

What the governor doesn\u2019t realize is that millionaires like me are so rich that we can afford to live wherever we want. I, for one, choose to live in New York precisely because of the amenities that the state\u2019s relatively high taxes<\/a> finance \u2014 including its world-class schools, parks, libraries, museums, hospitals and subways.<\/p>\n

To her credit, the tentative budget agreement\u00a0Hochul announced Thursday includes a pied-\u00e0-terre tax<\/a>, which would be paid by people who own second homes in New York City worth $5 million or more that are not anyone\u2019s primary residence. But the estimated $500 million in revenue that it would raise annually wouldn\u2019t be enough to close the city\u2019s $5.4 billion budget gap. It also wouldn\u2019t do enough to fill Trump\u2019s billions of dollars in cuts to New Yorkers\u2019 food and health care assistance programs, and it wouldn\u2019t do anything to help people outside of New York City.<\/p>\n

In short, Hochul\u2019s pied-\u00e0-terre tax is a good start, but to fully course-correct, she has to think bigger.<\/p>\n

She can raise income tax rates on high earners in New York City. She can throw her support behind legislation<\/a> that would create new state income tax brackets for millionaires. She can champion legislation<\/a> that would raise tax rates on large corporations. The possibilities for tax-the-rich policy solutions are endless.<\/p>\n

I am urging Gov. Hochul to not fall for soundbites from a handful of billionaires<\/a> who would rather make empty threats to move out of the state than pay taxes. They don\u2019t represent me or any of the affluent New Yorkers I\u2019ve encountered over the years. We love living here, but we also want the doormen and actors and teachers and everyone else that we need to make New York continue being New York to be able to live and raise their families here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are no obstacles in the governor\u2019s way to saving thousands of New Yorkers from going hungry or getting sick. There are no obstacles in her way to getting all of us on a better, more sustainable path. All she needs to do is find the political will to tax millionaires like me more \u2014 before it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n

Morris Pearl lives in New York City and is the chair of Patriotic Millionaires<\/a>. He was formerly a managing director at BlackRock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York is traveling down a dangerous road. Thanks to President Donald Trump\u2019s billions of dollars in funding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[18281,9,24,55,54,56,12522],"class_list":["post-224358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-commentary","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-opiniontu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}