Posted on 03/07/2019 6:24:56 AM PST by tired&retired
I'm doing a New York Non-Resident Tax Return and it is the most unfair tax law on non-residents I have seen in over 40 years of doing taxes.
New York, with one of the highest tax rates in the USA computes your NY Tax by applying their high rate to all your income on the Federal Return and then allocating the tax based upon the percentage of NY income to total Federal income. The effect of this is to tax your out of state income at the New York higher tax rate which is illegal.
Example: $8,500 income from wages in NY. $31,500 income in Pennsylvania where residency was maintained all year.
NY computes the tax on the $40,000 Federal total and then allocates it by the ratio of $8,500 divided by $40,000.
This effectively has NY taxing PA income which is illegal.
It is based on the idea that a progressive tax system is good. If a millionaire makes 5% of his income in state X, why should the state collect the same tax they would on someone who made 50K in that state?
It isn’t simplification so much as a way to tax someone based on their total ability to pay. It is completely reasonable - assuming a “progressive” tax system rather than a flat tax system.
And now that the Dems have control of everything in Albany, you can expect that tax rate to go up, especially after Cuomo’s whining about the lack of tax revenues.
Any manner of taxation by one jurisdiction that winds up actually applying an effective tax on income not earned in that jurisdiction is wrong.
The federal tax rules were just as wrong as New Yorks on that score, taxing “total” income no matter where in the world a person or company actually earned it. The recent tax changes have begun to move us to a territorial tax system, where what tax is income that our own domestic economic activity generates, not income earned outside our own domestic economy.
State taxation should be the same way, not just in theory but in how their rules could wrongly, as many do now, actually wind up taxing income NOT earned in the state.
I don’t know about kudzu. I’m a city boy. I hear it’s edible, though, but have not confirmed that personally. :)
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