Political Memes

Taylor Swift owns multiple secondary properties in New York City.

She has amassed a massive real estate footprint on a single block in Tribeca, worth an estimated $50+ million. Her holdings include:

• ​An 8,000-square-foot duplex penthouse at 155 Franklin Street.
• ​A second-floor unit in the same building purchased for nearly $10 million.
• ​An $18 million townhouse right next door at 153 Franklin Street.

Governor Hochul and Mayor Mamdani finalized a deal to implement a pied-à-terre tax surcharge on luxury secondary residences in NYC.

The tax starts as a 4% surcharge on the property's value and then there is an annual charge that scales up progressively based on the assessed value.

Rhode Island passed a similar luxury second-home tax targeting non-resident estates over $1 million, a piece of legislation that the press nicknamed the "Taylor Swift Tax" due to its impact on her $17 million Watch Hill mansion.

To say that this alone is balancing the budget is an oversimplification (what are hot takes if not reductive) but the tax will have a meaningful impact because she owns a lot of property in NYC.

taylor parties with magats i woulndt be so sure, and shes conservative herself.

As much as it would hurt charities, removing the tax deduction for donations of any kind feels necessary at this point.

Well, they're actually not paying taxes on that portion. So they're effectively getting to use your taxes to to multiply their promotion of whatever the goverment defines as charitable, be it food pantries or religious communities "providing" conversion therapy.

Sam Altman knew.

This is why I can't stand to watch professional sports anymore, just some millionaire getting payed by his billionaire owner to play a game so you stay distracted by your bread and circuses.

He suspended pensions contributions, took just over $8bn in state aid funding and exemptions from state regulations, and delayed initiatives such as classroom size reduction. The city also over-estimated the number of employees it would have this year so that was an extra special saving of $1.3bn when expected outgoings were reconciled with the actual number. The actual tax increases he has implemented would “only” be worth $500m.

Basically it was a one-time thing, and the budget won’t be balanced next year, and the tax increases are nowhere near enough. But it got good press for a couple of days which I suspect was the point.

It's both. He convinced Kathy Hochul to pass a tax on second properties (pied-à-terre tax), but he also suspended pension contributions for 5 years.

Yea i looked it up earlier. It looks like a tax on second homes valued over a certain amount

Fuck yeah he did.

And, shockingly, they're not leaving NYC en masse.

We desperately need a tax on securities. I don't particularly care about taxing luxury products, because those products are produced by workers, who pay taxes and buy things. But securities are the "means of production".

Don't tax the dollar value of the security. Don't force them to liquidate their shares before they can pay a tax. Just go ahead and transfer a percentage of their shares of each security to the IRS, who can liquidate it on the open market, slowly over time.

I am not sure if you are familiar with NY's minimum wage. NY is one of the states that set the state minimum higher than the federal minimum and continued to do so. It still isn't enough, but we are trying here.

https://dol.ny.gov/minimum-wage

This is true, but also Adams left a huge deficit on his way out with must-pays with the sole intention of hurting Mamdani utilizing that requirement as a cudgel. It's nothing short of impressive that he was able to stick to his values and reverse the damage at the same time.