Victories
Led the Charge for Property Tax Relief Under the Tax Cap
NFIB was the leader in the “Keep the Cap New York” campaign and helped defeat proposals that would weaken the tax cap. Since it was enacted in 2012, the property tax cap has produced $7.6 billion in savings and helped limit the tax burden on homeowners.
Agricultural Land Assessment
NFIB led the fight to decrease the agricultural land assessment from 10% to 2%, which lowered property taxes for farms and agriculture related businesses. This has provided considerable relief for family farms suffering from rapidly escalating tax assessments.
MTA Payroll Tax
NFIB fought successfully to exempt almost 80% of employers from this costly unfair regional payroll tax. Employers that are not completely exempt pay the tax at a drastically reduced rate.
Estate Tax Reform
NFIB supported increasing the estate tax exclusion and indexing the exclusion amount to inflation to match the federal level.
Challenges
Make the Property Tax Cap Permanent
NFIB continues to push for a permanent property tax cap rather than requiring legislation extending the expiration of the cap every few years. NFIB also continues to push back against numerous proposals to allow for exemptions that would weaken the cap.
Labor Mandates
NFIB continues to oppose mandates that would impose excessive costs and onerous compliance burdens on employers such as the predictive scheduling mandate, expanding prevailing wage, broadening paid leave and requiring participation in state sponsored retirement programs.
Workers’ Compensation Reform
NFIB is fighting for workers’ compensation reform that will produce significant savings and reduce costs for employers. New York employers pay the third highest premiums in the country and struggle under premium costs that increased more than nine percent last year. The most recent budget provides some savings but NFIB continues to work for additional reforms.
Farm Labor Bill
NFIB will continue to fight to defeat legislation that would allow unionization of farm workers, leading to higher labor costs including overtime pay and workers’ compensation costs. Imposing costly regulations and labor mandates will hurt the ability of New York farms to compete in the marketplace.
