A supermajority of the New York state Senate’s 63 members rarely agree on anything, but there are 44 senators (and growing) who are sponsoring a necessary bill to exempt jobless folks from having to pay income tax on the unemployment benefits they collected when COVID threw millions out of work last year.
Four million New Yorkers received unemployment compensation during 2020. Congress and President Joe Biden correctly exempted $10,200 of those funds from taxation, and normally the New York tax law would have automatically changed to match the federal rule. But COVID times aren’t normal, so it fell to Albany to act.
That Albany didn’t act in passing the state budget was partly due to uncertainty at the time if states accepting the $350 billion in federal COVID relief could cut taxes, but the Treasury Department has since said it is fine.
Which is why a majority of the state Senate’s ruling Democrats, along with just about every Republican, have now signed on the bill authored by Sen. Simcha Felder. Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins should heed the wishes of her conference and put the measure on the floor. We bet it would get 63 votes.
The estimated $1.4 billion cost isn’t nothing, but tax revenues are coming in much higher than projected, and finding a way to make this work is why these people are in the Senate. Or would these elected politicians prefer to send a tax invoice for hundreds of bucks each to 4 million jobless New Yorkers, many of whom are also voters?
The COVID-delayed Tax Day is Monday, May 17. Meanwhile, the number of senators sponsoring the bill is climbing and climbing. Stewart-Cousins and her colleagues must lead by bringing along Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Gov. Andrew Cuomo to get this done.
No senator lost a paycheck during COVID, but plenty of their constituents sure did. Failure to follow Congress and exempting the benefits means people are going to have to pay. And they should blame the Legislature.