Posted on 05/31/2004 6:38:52 AM PDT by GAGOPSWEEPTOVICTORY
Your pain at the gas pump is the state's gain. Soaring gasoline prices are expected to enrich the state's tax coffers by $200 million this fiscal year - assuming prices for a gallon of fuel stay at $2 or higher, experts say.
New Yorkers already pay the highest gas taxes in the nation.
And the skyrocketing prices actually result in an even deeper bite here, because fuel taxes are based on percentages of the amount charged, not on a flat per-gallon rate.
Local governments, which levy their own gasoline sales taxes, also will benefit from the wallet-gouging cost of fuel, said E.J. McMahon, a tax policy expert with the conservative Manhattan Institute.
In New York City, gas was selling Friday for an average of$2.26 a gallon, according to the Automobile Club of New York. This includes about 42 cents in city and state taxes - and that's on top of the 18.4cents a gallon drivers pay in federal excise taxes.
"New York is the highest-taxed state for gasoline in the whole country," said Cathy Kenny of the New York State Petroleum Council, an industry group.
The Automobile Club of New York's Robert Sinclair said state officials should consider suspending the 4.25% sales tax ongasoline to give relief to motorists.
"About 40% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, so when gas prices fluctuate like this, it's hard on families," he said.
But don't look to Albany for any help.
A spokesman for the state's top Democrat, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver of Manhattan, called gas prices a "federal issue."
A spokesman for the state's top Republican lawmaker, Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno of upstate Rensselaer, also said there's nothing in the works to give consumers a break.
Last year, when prices were about 30% lower than now, New York took in $689 million in gasoline and diesel fuel sales taxes. It also collected more than $515 million in other gasoline taxes.
"because fuel taxes are based on percentages of the amount charged, not on a flat per-gallon rate. "
Taxes people don't realize they are paying....
This statement from Bruno does not surprise me in the least. To heck with the people that pay his salary and allow him to maintain his job.....things are going to be done his way or else.
I lived in NY for a number of years. The power sharing "arrangement" that the Dems and Republicans have in Albany, where the Dims have a gerrymandered stranglehold on the Assembly and the Republicans have a gerrymandered strangelhold on the Senate has done little to step the tide of higher taxes (and has definately not done much to encourage the legislators to keep it in their pants, but I digress). I would submit to you that New York loses a lot of gas sales (especially trucks) to neighboring New Jersey and Pennsylvania because the gas tax is so high in New York.
It was the crazy taxes, the election of Hitlery, and the fact the weather was nicer down here that took me to Georgia.
I was born and raised in NYC, so I know what you are talking about. Left there when I was 22.
It was the northeast liberal/socialist takeover of Delaware, both R & D, that finally caused us to get out of Delaware.
I saw a lot of changes in the 21 years I lived in Delaware. We now live in Virginia. Where we live now the schools are better, the taxes are lower and it is an all around better area to raise a child.
NY is losing other sales tax revenue to surrounding states because of their high taxation.
I wouldn't change growing up in NYC for anything - but it is not something I want for my daughter.
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