With the state legislature back in office after their nine-day Easter break, the Working Families Party rallied yesterday in demand for taxes on Wall Street bonuses. They argue that a two-year tax could generate up to $6.9 billion a year for the state, which they could invest in things like health care and making MTA services less of a nightmare. Party director Dan Cantor told legislators the tax would be "a matter of basic fairness."
The proposed tax would be a 25% tax on bonuses of $250,000 or more, and 50% on those $500,000 or more. Party spokesman Dan Levitan told Gothamist the tax would be applied to any large bonus, but it is structured so that the largest share of the burden would fall on Wall Street. "We bailed out Wall Street to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. Now the banks are back to record profits, while nearly a million New Yorkers are out of work thanks to the recession Wall Street caused. Taxing the bonuses and using the money to close budget gaps and cut middle-class taxes is a commonsense way to make the bailout pay dividends for everyone." State democrats told the Daily News that the tax would be considered a "last option" to close the $9 billion budget gap.
