New York state has reaped a bumper crop of tax revenue over the past five years — thanks largely to a historic surge in capital gains and Wall Street bonuses ginned up by a doubling of stock prices since the market bottomed out in late March of 2020.
But the stock market’s rollercoaster ride in the wake of President Trump’s tariff shakeup could reverse that trend — and should make Gov. Hochul take a hard look at her massive $252 billion budget plan.
Hochul’s executive budget for this fiscal year, released in January, projected a further 12.4% gain in the S&P this year — down by roughly half from each of the previous two years, but still not bad by historical standards.
In February, as the S&P 500 hit its most recent peak, Hochul’s budget director and legislative fiscal staffers agreed that the state’s tax revenue projection could be raised — by $550 million to $800 million over their initial forecast.
Then the S&P tumbled mostly downward. By the March 31 end of the fiscal year, the index had fallen 8% from its peak.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post
______________________
E.J. McMahon is a senior fellow at the Empire Center for Public Policy and a Manhattan Institute adjunct fellow. Follow him on Twitter here. This piece is adapted from his Ever Upward Substack.
Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
