Mayor Bloomberg gave his usual rallying cry not to tax the rich during his Q&A with reporters today -- this time railing against Albany’s plan to tax hedge funders, our Kate Lucadamo reports:
“I think it’s the bet thing that ever happened to Connecticut,” he quipped, stone-faced. “I can’t imagine why every hedge fund wouldn’t pick up and move.”
Bloomberg has warned before that taxing the rich will hurt the local economy, but said the hedge fund industry is particularly vulnerable because “hedge funds are a bunch of desks with terminals on them. They could go anyplace. We’ve lost a lot of business to Connecticut and this would send more of them.”
But he said Gov. Paterson is blaming the Legislature for the tax-the-wealthy proposals, particularly higher taxes for high earners.
“The Governor said to me this morning when I talked to him that he is not in favor of this. The Legislature has insisted on the raising taxes on the wealthy,” said Bloomberg.
He also called the cap on charitable deductions “as crazy as the hedge fund thing.”
(I should note here that NYC gets a bit of an exception on this one.)
