NEW ROCHELLE, NY — The Westchester media had fallen all over itself to shill for Westchester County Executive George Latimer but none has proven a bigger flip-flopper than David McKay Wilson of the Journal News.
As we have been reporting, every media outlet in Westchester that reported on Latimer’s proposed sales tax has falsely reported the increase in the tax rate from 7 3/8% to 8 3/8% to be a 1% increase in sales tax when it is quite clearly a 14% tax increase (when the tax goes up on 7 3/8 that is calculated as 1 / 7 3/8 or 14%).
The so-called “Lohud Tax Watch reporter”, who played the role of tax watchdog during the Astorino administration has turned into a tax lapdog in the Latimer administration. Latimer even accords McKay Wilson the rare (and rather odd) privilege of Westchester County (not Latimer personally) tweeting out an artsy black-and-white photo documenting a supposedly grand moment in history.
As the “tax guy” at LoHud you might think Wilson would be among the first to run the numbers and correct the record. You would be wrong.
In today’s paper, David McKay Wilson goes a step below even Fios1News in misrepresenting Latimer’s plan to raise the sales tax RATE by one percentage POINT.
McKay Wilson writes:
“Westchester County’s bid to raise its sales tax by one cent as part of the state budget deal failed to gain the support of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who told legislators the increase did not belong in the state’s omnibus spending plan.”
By one cent???
According to McKay Wilson, Latimer is not proposing a 14% sales tax increase or even a 1% sales increase but a tax increase of just one penny. So, buy a magic lamp pay an extra penny, buy a Lamborghini pay an extra penny.
Who could object to that? No one, if it were true.
At a penny a transaction it is hard to imagine where McKay Wilson get the figure of “$140 million in projected revenues from the proposed sales-tax hike.” That would entail a whopping 14 billion taxable transactions in Westchester. That would appear to be a very high number.
Woof! woof!
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