http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/t...LhaW0yESCrknEJ
Thanks a lot to the 1%
Pays 43% of city tax
They’ve been demonized and denounced for not doing their fair share.
But a new analysis released yesterday shows that the top 1 percent of New York City’s moneymakers paid 43.2 percent of the city’s income tax — even though they accounted for just 33.8 percent of total income here.
Acting on a request from City Councilman James Oddo (R-SI), the Independent Budget Office reviewed 410,000 of the 3,462,000 tax returns filed here in 2009, the latest year available.
“Both income and tax liabilities are highly concentrated among the most affluent New Yorkers,” the IBO reported.
The findings backed up claims by Mayor Bloomberg and others who warn that the city can’t afford to lose the super-rich because they’re picking up a big chunk of the income-tax tab.
A total of 34,598 filers made it into the exclusive 1percent club with a minimum adjusted gross income of $493,439.
Then there were those in the top 10 percent who had incomes of at least $105,400 and chipped in 71.2 percent of income-tax collections, while pulling in just 58.2 percent of income generated here.
A third of the city’s filers — representing 1.18 million returns — paid no income tax at all.
Oddo said he asked for the study because many of his middle-class constituents fall into the top 10 percent category and are being unfairly attacked in the class war sparked by Occupy Wall Street.
“I’m not defending the rich. I’m defending many of my constituents,” Oddo said. “A lot of my constituents are overtaxed. Some of the rhetoric I’ve heard is wrong on its face.”
Councilman Jumaane Williams (D-Brooklyn), who was arrested during one OWS demonstration, said the debate about income distribution is bigger than a single study.
“Whenever we have a problem, we go to the middle class, the working class,’’ he said. “A person making $1 million can pay more.”
Hybrid Mode
