Carrie Bradshaw, everyone's favorite single girl from "Sex and the City," loves shoes. In fact, she once said, "It's really hard to walk in a single woman's shoes – that's why you sometimes need really special shoes!" Unfortunately for Carrie, Governor David Paterson and his friends in the State Legislature now want to raise taxes on those shoes to pay for their overspending.
Still unable and unwilling reduce spending, Governor Paterson has just proposed $1 billion in tax hikes to close a nearly $10 billion deficit in the state's budget, including a tax on shoes and clothing purchases below $110. After punishing professionals with higher income taxes and going after smokers with higher tobacco taxes, New York now wishes to penalize the scum of the earth, namely people who buy shoes. If enacted, this will mean a $660 million tax hike on New Yorkers over the next year. According to my fashion sources in New York City, this tax will snare everything from the single professional woman who buys a pair of high heels at a Barney's trunk show to the kid who's buying a pair of Nikes in preparation for going back to school.
Gov. Paterson's love affair with higher taxes is getting out of hand. New York's budget has grown by at least 70% over the last decade. Instead of proposing to raise taxes on everything from clothing to cigarettes and sugary drinks to feed the beast, New York needs to cut its spending to a more manageable level. This recession has forced New Yorkers to prioritize their expenses and then cut what they cannot afford. One wonders what might be possible if Gov. Paterson and the Legislature devoted as much creativity to finding savings as they do to finding revenues.
As we know from Carrie, being single in New York is hard enough. Why must Gov. Paterson make it more difficult for the single women by taxing shoes?