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New York City's real estate market continues to be battered by the coronavirus lockdown and is likely to keep suffering with no end to the current lockdown in sight. One major commercial landlord said 80 percent of their retail tenants missed rent payments in April and May and others are reporting that even companies that have healthy finances are simply choosing not to meet their lease agreements, amid growing uncertainty over how many businesses will actually work in offices in the future. Residents are also abandoning their expensive apartments by breaking their leases or failing to renew them to wait...

President Trump’s presidency has been a boon for states. Thanks to major increases in state tax collections in late 2017 and mid-2018, 41 states have recovered from the Great Recession. State bank ­accounts are in much better shape to weather a new recession, according to a recent analysis by Pew, though challenges remain because of the debt that states accumulated after the downturn. Yet this is no time for spending complacency. For local governments, the Barack Obama years — characterized by tax hikes, more extensive regulations on businesses and sluggish economic growth — looked like no other in recent memory....

ALBANY — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Monday announced a dramatic drop in state income tax revenue of $2.8 billion, which he says will prompt him to revise his 2019-20 budget and reconsider spending on schools, health care and repairs to roads and bridges. Cuomo, a Democrat, blamed the shortfall on a federal tax plan backed by Republican President Donald Trump. Cuomo said the law's cap on deductions for state and local taxes at $10,000 was to blame and suggested it is, anecdotally, triggering high-earners to leave New York. “At this point there is no doubt that the budget we...

Wait, weren’t the tax cuts supposed to bankrupt the country to benefit the rich? It almost looks like the tax cuts — which took effect in January — are paying for themselves. That wouldn’t be fair, either. As the CBO notes, the new payroll withholding scheduled hadn’t fully taken effect in January; companies don’t have to update their employee tax withholdings until the middle of this month. When that happens, monthly revenues from individual income taxes will likely slip. But the latest CBO report does show how a growing economy can make up a lot of the difference between the...

In tax year 2014, according to a report published by the Internal Revenue Service, the federal government hauled in a then-record $1,377,797,136,000 in individual income taxes. Nonetheless, of the 148,606,578 individual income tax return filers that year, 52,062,499 (or 35 percent) filed what the IRS calls “nontaxable returns,” which means they paid no net individual income taxes. Among these 52,062,499 filers who did not pay income taxes in 2014, according to Table 3.3 in the report, were 31,129,405 filers who also received $90,276,007,000 in payments from the federal government for “refundable” tax credits. “In total, taxpayers claimed $105.6 billion in...

Inflation-adjusted federal tax revenues hit a record $1.48 trillion for the first half of fiscal year 2016, but the federal government still ran a $461 billion deficit during that time, according to the latest monthly Treasury Department statement. Treasury receipts include tax revenue from individual income taxes, corporate income taxes, social insurance and retirement taxes, unemployment insurance taxes, excise taxes, estate and gift taxes, customs duties, and other miscellaneous items. In the first half of fiscal 2016, which included the months of October, November, December, January, February, and March, the amount of taxes collected by the federal government outpaced the...

Inflation-adjusted federal tax revenues not only hit a record high in fiscal 2014, but marked the first time that tax revenues have ever topped $3 trillion, according to the latest Monthly Treasury Statement. In fiscal year 2014, inflation-adjusted federal tax revenues hit a record $3,020,848,000,000, but the federal government still ran a $483,350,000,000 deficit during that time. Each month, the Treasury publishes the government’s “total receipts,” including all revenue from individual income taxes, corporate income taxes, social insurance and retirement taxes (including Social Security and Medicare taxes), unemployment insurance taxes, excise taxes, estate and gift taxes, customs duties, and “miscellaneous...

The Huffington Post is beside itself with indignant rage over companies moving their headquarters overseas to avoid paying the highest corporate income tax in the industrialized world. Feeling that Secretary Jack Lew was onto something when he accused companies of being economic traitors for reducing their tax burden, the HuffPo let loose a string of economic illiterate ramblings about the indecency of corporate profits.Early last week, the drug firm Mylan stomped on the Stars and Stripes as it ditched America for the Netherlands. Then, on Friday, the drug company AbbVie similarly renounced America. For 30 pieces of silver, it will...

Federal tax revenues continue to run at a record pace in fiscal 2014, as the federal government’s total receipts for the fiscal year closed April at $1,735,030,000,000, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement. Despite this record revenue, the federal government still ran a deficit of $306.411 billion in the first seven months of the fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1, 2013 and will end on Sept. 30, 2014. …

Federal tax revenues hit an all-time non-inflation-adjusted monthly high of approximately $406.7 billion in April, according to newly released data from the U.S. Treasury. Overall federal tax revenues in April 2013 were up 28 percent from April 2012, and individual-income-tax revenues specifically were up 36 percent. … Thanks to the record tax revenue, the federal government ran a $112.9 billion surplus in April. However, in the first seven months of fiscal 2013 (October through April), the federal government has run a deficit of $487.6 billion. …

"...and the county's conservative lawmakers have been passing silly-season unconstitutionalities, like a law prohibiting a man from being naked in the presence of a child..."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tells us the tax issue is behind us and that we can now move on to spending. Really? What makes him think the GOP will succeed this time when it couldn't last time? The just-concluded fiscal cliff deal included no material spending cuts, which the GOP justified by saying it had achieved locked-in rates for most of Bush's tax cuts, which would force Obama to seriously discuss spending cuts and entitlement reform as part of the upcoming debt ceiling negotiations. But a White House memo announcing the deal said that postponing the sequester for two...

In the current debate over the lame duck deal, the focus seems to be solely on the issue of taxes. Raising rates or closing loopholes: which will it be? After all it’s essential that the federal government increase its revenues, right? Everyone knows the government has run out of money, and talk of another debt limit debacle is already surfacing. Is the cause of the deficit declining federal revenues? Perhaps it's those pesky billionaires moving jobs and profits overseas? Or, there's always some way to blame oil companies or George W. Bush. The reality is far less flattering for...

WASHINGTON - If you thought the presidential election would lead to an early break in the fiscal gridlock that now divides our government, think again. President Obama's post-election press conference on Wednesday signaled he is digging in for a lengthy political battle to raise tax rates amid new evidence the economy is still very weak and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future if not throughout his second term. If anything, he's taking a tougher tone with Republicans in Congress as he prepares for negotiations with House Speaker John Boehner and other House and Senate leaders on Friday. Despite...

Barack Obama and his supporters complained bitterly in the wake of last Friday's pronouncement that "the private sector is doing fine," accusing the media of taking the remark out of context. The point of his remark, his backers claim, was that compared to the suffering public sector at the state level, the private sector was performing relatively well. That's not what Obama's actual claim was, but we'll let that pass for now. Let's focus on Obama's argument for a moment. Just how badly is the public sector performing?According to that bastion of conservative thought — the New York Times —...

Cities View Homesteads as a Source of Income By MONICA DAVEY BEATRICE, Neb. — Give away land to make money? It hardly sounds like a prudent scheme. But in a bit of déjà vu, that is exactly what this small Nebraska city aims to do. Beatrice was a starting point for the Homestead Act of 1862, the federal law that handed land to pioneering farmers. Back then, the goal was to settle the West. The goal of Beatrice’s “Homestead Act of 2010,” is, in part, to replenish city coffers. The calculus is simple, if counterintuitive: hand out city land now...

Sales tax revenue plummets in Sacramento region By Loretta Kalb and Ed Fletcher lkalb@sacbee.com Published: Saturday, Apr. 24, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 1A In the last five years, sales tax revenue in the Sacramento region dropped by $76 million as consumers increasingly stayed home in the harsh economy, a Bee survey finds. The Bee looked at revenue streams for 18 local governments, including Sacramento, Yolo, El Dorado and Placer counties, and 14 cities. Billions of dollars in sales disappeared locally, and with it a large share of the funds local governments have used to run police departments, parks...

The nation’s unemployment rate has pushed the budget deficit to a record $1.4 trillion in 2009. The unemployment rate hit 9.8 percent in September and is widely expected to hit 10 percent before the end of the year... High unemployment means more unemployment checks and less tax revenue, costing the government roughly $100 billion annually... Those costs will persist for the next couple of years. Unemployment compensation rose from $47 billion in fiscal 2008 to $120 billion in 2009, a 156 percent jump. High unemployment has also added to the deficit by helping drive down tax revenue. Individual income taxes...

Personal income tax receipts coming into the state in January fell $1.3 billion below Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's revenue estimates in the spending plan he released last month, the state controller said Tuesday. The lower-than-expected revenue raises questions about whether Schwarzenegger will reach his stated goal of eliminating the state's net operating deficit in the budget year beginning in July. The governor's proposed 2007-2008 budget assumes tax revenue in the current budget year would grow by $1.1 billion, or 1 percent. In the coming fiscal year, Schwarzenegger also assumed a $6.8 billion boost, or 7 percent increase. "Tax payments are down...

This is not just our opinion. Harvard's N. Gregory Mankiw, an economic conservative who served as chairman of Mr. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, has tested the hypothesis on which Mr. Bush's claim is based: He looked at the extent to which tax cuts stimulate extra growth and the extent to which that growth generates extra tax revenue that offsets the initial loss of revenue from the tax cut.