National Review Online
Thursday, February 19, 2026
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday unveiled
his first budget, which came in the form of a threat. Given the
deficit he inherited, he warned, if the state does not approve his plans for a
destructive wealth tax, the city would be forced to impose a staggering 9.5
percent property tax increase.
The tax, which would hit 3 million residential properties
and 100,000 commercial buildings, would immediately increase the housing costs
of working-class New Yorkers, regardless of whether they own homes or are
renters whose owners pass the taxes onto them. This would represent the
abandonment of Mamdani’s “affordability” agenda, of which cheaper housing was
one of the core pillars. The mayor isn’t even trying to hide that fact. His own
budget document projects that the median income of those affected by the tax
hike would be $122,000 — which doesn’t go as far in New York City as it does
elsewhere, and of course, half of the people would be below the median.
On top of that, this plan would require raiding the
city’s rainy-day fund as well as a health benefits fund for retired city
workers.
This “harmful path” would be completely avoidable, he
said, if only New York Governor Kathy Hochul and the state legislature would
approve his plan to raise taxes on higher-income individuals and corporations.
A wealth tax would require approval of the state government, and Hochul,
currently running for reelection, has indicated opposition. But the city could
hike property taxes on its own.
Aside from the plan being bad policy, Mamdani doesn’t
exactly have the leverage he thinks he does. Immediately after he released his
budget, the top two Democratic lawmakers on the city council who would have
control over property taxes and could have helped make his bluff more
convincing poured cold water on the idea.
“At a time when New Yorkers are already grappling with an
affordability crisis, dipping into rainy day reserves and proposing significant
property tax increases should not be on the table whatsoever,” New York City
Council Speaker Julie Menin and finance committee chairwoman Linda Lee declared
in a joint statement.
Mamdani’s push for a wealth tax, which has failed
whenever it has been tried (never raising the promised revenue and hurting the
economy by causing those with more money to move), rests on the fiction that
those with means aren’t paying their fair share. But according to an analysis by the Empire Center for Public Policy, “Filers in
the top 1 percent — which roughly corresponds to incomes of $1 million or more
— accounted for 46 percent of income tax paid and one-third of total state tax
revenue in 2023,” which is the most recent year with available data. Meanwhile,
according to the state
comptroller’s office, on Wall Street’s contribution to New York City
specifically: “The securities industry is a major tax contributor to the state
and city through business taxes on profits and personal income taxes on
employees’ salaries. The industry generated an estimated $6.7 billion in
revenue for New York City in fiscal year (FY) 2025, up 35.1% from the prior
year, and represented 8.4% of the city’s total tax collections that year.”
If Mamdani is actually concerned about closing the city’s
fiscal deficit, an obvious place to start would be to cut spending. Instead, he
is proposing increasing the budget by $5 billion to $127 billion. By
comparison, Governor Ron DeSantis proposed a budget of $117 billion for the entire State of Florida. This gap
exists despite the fact that New York City’s population is 8.5 million and the
population of Florida is 23.5 million.
If there is any good that may come out of the Mamdani
experiment, it is that it will provide yet another high-profile example of what
happens when the grandiose fantasies of utopian socialism encounter reality —
and math.
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