Invest In Our New York

After a year of COVID-era campaigning by hundreds of allied organizations, New York state lawmakers enacted a budget with $4.3 billion in new, progressive, annual revenue that taxes the rich and big corporations to invest in communities.

NEW TAXES, NEW INVESTMENTS

These funds will pay for a long-sought multi-year commitment to provide court-ordered funding for Black and Brown public school students; billions in new investments for health care and rental assistance for low income New Yorkers; and a first-in-the-nation two-billion-dollar excluded workers fund to provide equitable pandemic relief to excluded workers left out of federal COVID aid programs due to immigration status.

BIG POLICY ACHIEVEMENTS

After drafting, introducing and campaigning on a big new six-bill package to tax high incomes, extreme wealth and big corporations, we achieved two big tax victories:

Progressive Income Tax

• Increase in tax rates (from 8.82% to 9.65%) for those earning more than $1 million (or $2 million in joint filings)
• New tax brackets for people who make between $5 million and $25 million (10.3%), and those making over $25 million (10.9%)

Corporate Tax

• Increase to 7.25 percent from 6.5 percent (unchanged for small businesses)
• Reinstate Capital Base Tax at .1875%, exempting coops and manufacturers

We won bold new community investments:

• • $2.1 billion fund for excluded workers. This is the first fund of its kind in the United States. With this fund, New York will provide between $3,000 and $15,000 survival checks to 200,000 excluded workers.
• $2.4 billion emergency rental assistance program that will help tenants across the state, including undocumented people, pay rent debt accrued during the COVID crises.
• Three-year full phase-in of the $4.2 billion owed to New York’s high-needs public schools after 15 years of organizing for equity in school funding.
• $1 billion fund to support small businesses, including $800 million for small business grants and $200 million in small business tax credits.
• $900 million fund for working and middle-class tax relief including
• $440 million in property tax relief for 1.3 million New Yorkers and $400 million in middle-class personal income tax cuts.
• Restoration of over $400 million in Medicaid cuts to healthcare services
• $105 million expansion of universal full-day prekindergarten, providing pre-K funding to 210 districts that don’t receive state-funded pre-k now. 

This is only just the beginning. After decades of austerity, we’re working at the state and federal levels to win economic, social and racial justice in tax policies and public budgets. We’re working on a fuller report on the New York effort and the lessons learned, and we’re bringing this experience to other regions across the country as state lawmakers finalize budgets due this summer. Our New York wins are a powerful example of what our communities can and will accomplish with your support. 

Learn more about the Invest in the New York Act here.

This information is provided by the Invest in our New York Coalition.