In her first State of the State address, Gov. Kathy Hochul touched on many topics that are near and dear to New Yorkers, with tax relief and the economic recovery from COVID first and foremost on the minds of many of us in the Empire State.

In her address last week, the governor announced new efforts to deliver tax relief for thousands of small businesses and millions of middle class New Yorkers as part of the 2022 State of the State. The plan will provide $100 million in tax relief for 195,000 small businesses through increasing a tax return adjustment to reduce small businesses’ gross business income. The plan will also accelerate the implementation of $1.2 billion in New York’s existing Middle Class Tax Cut for 6 million New Yorkers which first began to be implemented in 2018, and establish a $1 billion property tax rebate program to put money back into the pockets of more than 2 million New Yorkers who have had to endure rising costs as the pandemic has progressed. 

We all know that New York was not economically healthy prior to the start of the pandemic, and the challenge of overcoming the economic hardships caused by the pandemic have been a tremendous burden, particularly on homeowners and on small businesses.

While the governor reports that New York has recovered some 1.2 million jobs since the start of the pandemic, we are far from out of the woods. The State’s unemployment rate is 6.6 percent – more than two points higher than the national rate. Some 71 percent of small businesses still report negative effects from the pandemic. As of July, earnings remained below pre-pandemic levels in seven of New York’s 13 major job sectors.

Hochul’s plan for recovery is to provide $100 million in tax relief for 195,000 small businesses by widening eligibility and increasing a tax return adjustment that reduces a small business’s gross income. Those small businesses, we’ve recognized, are the backbone of our economy.

Also promised last week is a plan to accelerate the $1.2 billion in middle class tax cuts that was not scheduled to be fully implemented until 2025. New Yorkers are now promised the full tax cuts by 2023.
A $1 billion tax rebate is promised for more than two million eligible property owners. We are supposed to receive these benefits by the fall of 2022.

Other initiatives include tax credits for farms and the food production industry. Hopefully that will help curtail our rapidly shrinking agricultural landscape.
We look forward to these initiatives and to see what she can accomplish in her first full year in office.