With just days left before the state’s budget deadline, and as city budget negotiations re underway, New York City Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams has launched a new tool letting New Yorkers experiment with ways to balance the city budget, a demonstration of the need to increase revenue by taxing the richest resident in order to preserve city services.
The Build-A-Budget simulation is an accessible, interactive way for people to visualize the way the city’s money is spent, where it comes from, and what goes into ensuring that it is balanced without slashing city services. Within the interface, users can raise and lower city expenditures across agencies and initiatives, and enact or reject revenue raising measures on the state level.
New Yorkers can try to Build-A-Budget today at advocate.nyc.gov/BuildABudget. After balancing their budget, New Yorkers can submit it to the Public Advocate’s office, where responses will be compiled and reviewed.
Users begin with the projected Fiscal Year 2027 budget deficit. They have the option to erase this gap by enacting common sense revenue-raising measures at the state level.
"When we talk about the budget, we often talk about the few people in the room and making the decisions. That obscurity gives power to the few, as rich donors try to build our budget behind closed doors – now people can engage with the numbers right from their phones," saidPublic Advocate Jumaane D. Williams. "With Build-A-Budget, New Yorkers can see the tradeoffs that are at stake – and the ways out of this budget deficit, I hope this is a tool for education, engagement, and advocacy – and while the budget isn’t a game, the simulation is kind of fun. It shows that there are no easy ways to build a budget, but that if the governor would support the common-sense revenue raising we've laid out, it would get a lot more clear."
The budget process is often opaque, and the potential tradeoffs and implications can be difficult to navigate. The Public Advocate’s office designed Build-A-Budget to increase transparency and participation opportunities for the millions of New Yorkers impacted by budget decisions.Ahead of the state budget deadline, this tool clearly shows the need for the state to enact key revenue-raising measures in order to close the budget gap and support vital programming for the long-term. Among thepopular, common-sense measures the Public Advocate is supporting at the state level are:
The Fair Share Act which would authorize the City Council to implement a 2% surcharge on personal income above $1 million for New York City residents. This bill would rectify New York City’s essentially flat income tax. It would raise about $3 billion per year.
The NYC Corporate Tax which modestly raises taxes on the most profitable corporations, could raise $1.75 billion annually.
Reducing the NYC Pass-Through Entity Tax (PTET) Credit to 75% from 100% would raise about $700 million per year, per the Mayoral administration. The PTET credit was created in reaction to the federal government’s implementation of State and Local Tax (SALT) credit caps and allows high income individuals to pass their income through a corporation to pay less in taxes.
Implementing a Pied-à-Terre Tax would apply a tax increase on certain high-value properties in which there is no full-time primary resident. While the State bill would allow City Council to structure the actual pied-à-terre tax schedule, gradually increasing the rate from 0.5% for properties worth $5 million to 4% for properties worth $25 million or more would raise about $650 million each year.
Read more about ways for the state and city to raise revenue here.