New York State was once the home of icon industries. General Electric in Schenectady, IBM in Binghamton, Kodak in Rochester and Bethlehem Steel in Buffalo were once major employers. Today such enterprises are a mere shadow of their past glory, shell companies or virtually out of business. Bad decisions and inflexible adaptations certainly had much to do with their demise. However, persistent negative and adverse government policies from Albany and the NYS financial cabal in New York City has pushed and allowed the de-industrialization of Upstate economies. Even harder hit are small businesses who have struggled for several decades to simply survive.

Government spending has reached ridiculous levels. The net result is that New York State: Still the Worst For Small Business.

More Spending Instead of Tax Cuts

"This year, Cuomo also says the state will create a $50 million venture capital fund to invest in commercialization of technologies developed in the state’s research institutions. The governor also recently signed into law a new Tax Free NY initiative.

No, this doesn’t mean there aren’t any more taxes in New York state. The new law creates special zones around state university campuses where businesses will pay no taxes for the next 10 years.

The problem, observed the New York Post recently, is that the governor and the state legislature still haven’t cut the state’s bloated $143 billion budget. And they say they can’t lower personal income tax by even 1 percent. In fact, as the Post reports, Cuomo actually raised the top income tax rate almost two percent."

When State regimes pick business favorites and send the tax bill to ordinary residents to cough up the money, the tax base contracts as more people move to different locales that offer greater economic opportunities.

Grover Norquist and Patrick Gleason explain back in 2013 Why do New York politicians hate small business? Conditions have progressively worsened since then. "New York’s hostile business tax climate — the worst in the country, according to the non-partisan Tax Foundation — is not without real consequences. From 2000 to 2010, more than 1.2 million tax refugees fled New York, taking over $45 billion in income with them."

"Though it’s great to see Cuomo own up to the fact that New York’s tax climate is inhospitable to employers — and events like Small Business Saturday are nice — this doesn’t change the fact that New York’s political class is uniquely hostile to small business. To the detriment of the entire state economy."

Add into the mix the insanity of the NYC mayor.

"But what de Blasio neglects to mention is that his tax increase, as with Cuomo’s, would also ensnare thousands of small businesses — the majority of which file under the individual income tax system. New York City is already one of the costliest locales in which to operate a small business, and de Blasio is about to make Gotham even less hospitable to employers. Worse, his hike would come on top of Cuomo’s state tax increase."

Now contrast this sorry record of economic destruction with the rational position of Republican Assembly minority leader, Brian Kolb in Small businesses need our support to grow.

"The Assembly Minority Conference has continued to push for reforms that would broadly address New York’s toxic business climate. It will take much more than the gimmicks we’ve become all too familiar with, which nibble around the edge of the problem rather than strike at its heart, to get New York’s businesses headed in the right direction.

The Small Business Full Employment Act, in addition to numerous tax reductions, calls for the creation of the Division of Regulatory Review and Economic Growth. It would prohibit any new unfunded state mandates on local governments, school districts and small businesses while also requiring fiscal notes on bills.

The conference has proposed to eliminate the corporate franchise tax and personal income tax on manufacturers.

The Learning for Work program would establish a three-part program designed to create career-ready individuals upon high school graduation. It includes a youth apprenticeship program, enhanced regents professional degree and youth apprenticeship tax credit."

Attempts such as these to tame excessive taxes and clip the wings of the most abusive government corporate welfare policies such as the Industrial Development Agencies have mostly hit a brick wall. The NYS highest judicial court of law, the Court of Appeals did not provide relief when the Pork Lawsuit was argued, and continued their violation of the NY Constitution.

NYS cannot regain their claim as the Empire State by dishing out tax exemptions to mega corporations. The Real Deal reports that New York made the list of "least likely to be chosen" cities for the Amazon second HQ selection. The highly restrictive economic prospects for most of Upstate and Western NY has caused push back for some militant residents demanding desperate action as seen in Economics of NYS Southern Tier Secession.

Recently Japan's Fujifilm announced their takeover of Xerox. The subsequent downsizing and closing of small businesses are not new for NYS when anchor businesses fade into the sunset.

Savvy entrepreneurs and skilled business builders are not scared off by a cold weather climate, but are certainly adverse to an unfriendly commercial environment. New York State has been plagued by public unions for the inception of politicians taking bribes as election campaign donations.

Likewise, small businesses have been hampered by the lack of an effective lobby to champion their economic interests. Actual job creation has suffered even more as the merchant economy is starved by the expansion of public intrusion into the private sector. Those who believe that prosperity can be built upon the backs of the taxpayer are closet socialists at best, or more accurate dedicated Marxists.

Thomas Edison or George Eastman developed their companies with creative and efficient advancement based upon a competitive economy. The same cannot be said for the Amazon juggernaut who receives substantial government subsidies and favoritism. Small business is severely injured by this globalist model of crony government capitalism.

http://batr.org/merchantry/030718.html