The most recent payment Andrew Tobias got for old Tonight Show reruns was 38 cents. What he sends to the tax authorities is somewhat larger: his city and state bill for 2025 came to $350,000, and he says he would happily pay more.
Tobias, 79, is the financial writer behind “The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need”. He belongs to the Patriotic Millionaires, a group of wealthy Americans who campaign for higher taxes on people like themselves. His line, delivered to Business Insider: “I’m one of the very fortunate people who can afford to live in New York.” He suggests the city’s mayor should send ultra-wealthy taxpayers “a thank-you note and a fruit basket, so to speak.”
Why he left, and why he came back
It was not taxes as such that drove him out, he says. In the 1980s city finance officials tried to bill him unincorporated business tax for writing and speaking jobs done elsewhere. Tobias thought the idea was absurd. A speech in Utah, he argued, was not doing business in New York. He warned that he would move to Miami for good if the city insisted, and when it did, he followed through. “It was a matter of manhood,” he said. “I didn’t leave because of the money, I left because they made me crazy.”
The money he saved went to charity, and he liked the thank-you notes. Miami, though, was not the same. After a quarter-century he returned, wanting to be near loved ones who were dying. “I just started paying New York taxes again nearly 20 years ago. I don’t mind: it’s a great city.”
He now splits his year between an Upper West Side apartment he estimates at around $2.5 million, bought in 1977 with $11,000 cash and a $30,000 mortgage, and a beach house on Fire Island. Winters are in Miami.
The politics
The timing is not accidental. Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaigned on making the rich pay, to close the city’s budget gap and fund childcare for all and fare-free buses. State lawmakers answered in May with a pied-à-terre tax, which more than doubles the property tax bill on any second home worth over $5 million. Citadel CEO Ken Griffin hit back, telling CNBC the levy “discriminates against a narrow group of people.”
Tobias had already backed Mamdani’s proposed 2 per cent surcharge on incomes above $1m before the election, telling The i Paper he was “absolutely” in favour. “If you’re making $50m a year, are you really going to say, I can’t stay in New York City because I have to pay 2 per cent more of the $50m?” Even the millionaires who object, he said, would stay and pay. “They’re competitive, they want to see their fortune go up, they’re not eager to pay extra tax unless they have to, but if they have to they will.”
His own income includes $3,360 a month from Social Security, a charitable gift annuity that pays $6,600 monthly, and what he calls “a few hundred thousand dollars a year” from his IRA.
Sources
- Here's a New York City Millionaire and Why He Wants His Taxes Raised (Business Insider)
- New York is facing a tougher tax on the rich than the UK, and millionaires support it (The i Paper)
