“I’ve gotten tax cut after tax cut after tax cut. And I never needed any of them,” filmmaker Abigail Disney told Bloomberg.
Disney, granddaughter of Roy O. Disney, belongs to a small group of rich New Yorkers who say the uproar over Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s tax plans is overdone. The group is the Patriotic Millionaires, and its members argue that people at the top can easily afford to pay more.
Mamdani has floated several ways to raise city revenue. They include higher income taxes on those earning more than $1 million and a higher top corporate tax rate. Disney backs his proposed surcharge of 2 percentage points on millionaires. The money, she said, would help pay for schools, transit and child care. “All these things have fallen out from under the middle class,” she said, listing an education system that works, public transportation, infrastructure and health care.
The flight argument
Critics see it differently. Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman says the approach risks pushing wealthy residents and companies to lower-tax states such as Florida or Texas. Kathy Hochul and business groups have voiced the same worry.
Morris Pearl, a former BlackRock executive, does not buy it. “I’m certainly not going to move because of higher taxes. That’s ridiculous,” he said. “I live where I want to live, and so do most rich people.”
He also pointed out that anyone already wealthy has ways around an income tax. “When you’re already rich, you don’t need income,” Pearl said. “If you don’t have income, you don’t pay income taxes.”
Who pays now
The city has plenty of people to tax. According to the New York City Independent Budget Office, nearly 35,000 city residents earned at least $1 million in 2023. The top 1% already produce roughly two-fifths of the city’s income-tax revenue.
