Last week, State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli released the state’s October cash report, which found that state tax collections fell $170.8 million below July estimates and $259.8 million below initial estimates.
According to the Comptroller, in order for the state to keep its books balanced, tax collections will have to grow 5.1% in the last five months of the fiscal year, which ends March 31. However, his report does not reflect the loss of tax receipts resulting from Hurricane Sandy, which hit the New York City region on October 29. The lost tax revenues and higher expenses that result from the storm are expected to further reduce the state‘s tax receipts and lead to higher expenses.
Clearly, New York State is not even close to being on a sound fiscal footing. 2013 will be yet another year of little or no growth in terms of state tax revenue. We have to make sure that we continue on our current path of fiscal responsibility, and do not fall into the trap of overspending (and overtaxing) that New York has succumbed to before.
There are 2 Comments to "Comptroller: State Tax Collections Lag"
Please, for the sake of all of us hardworking families in the most taxed state of the nation, lower expenses to offset the lower tax revenues budgeted/forecasted. The residents of NYS cannot continue to shoulder additional tax increases, this only serves to further deteriote the upcoming generations reasons to stay in NYS upon high school and college graduations.
Please do what we in business have to do, if revenues lag, we must offset with lowering expenses, because if we increase our prices we lose to our competition, in the states case, you lose in population withdrawal from the state.
When will the politicians realize that they need to start treating the NYS budget like a homeowner. When an individual’s budget is in a crisis, there are only 2 ways to fix it: 1 ) In order to increase revenue, the individual needs to either work more hours at their current job or get a 2nd job and/or 2) reduce expenses.
Politicians are great at wanting to increase taxes to fix budgetary problems but very rarely look at ways to reduce spending. When they have found ways to reduce State spending, all they really did was transfer the expense to county and villages. Instead of taking money from my left pocket, they took it from the right pocket.
Look at State mandates if you want to start reducing expenses!