Golisano leaving New York to escape income taxes
Says he’s paying $13,000 a day
ALBANY — Ending any speculation about another possible run for governor, Rochester businessman and Sabres owner B. Thomas Golisano said Thursday he will be moving his legal residence to Florida to escape New York state taxes.
Golisano told a gathering of Rochester business executives that he will remain as owner of the Buffalo hockey team, but he is fleeing the Empire State to avoid paying $13,000 a day in state income taxes.
While Golisano said his move will not end his role as outspoken critic of New York state government, it remains uncertain how seriously his cause will be taken at the State Capitol as a resident of the Town of Naples, Fla.
The billionaire earlier this year told The Buffalo News that the only thing keeping him in New York was his family. “The only reason I’m staying in this state is I have family here. Economically, it just doesn’t make sense,” he said in February.
But since then, Gov. David A. Paterson and lawmakers approved a state budget that will raise $4 billion in new income taxes this year on wealthier residents. In Golisano’s case —and anyone else making more than $500,000 this year — he is seeing his state tax rate go from 6.85 percent to 8.97 percent.
Asked by reporters in Rochester if he was leaving to make a political statement, Golisano said, “No, it’s to save all that money and put it to better use.” That might include, he said, charities and possibly his political action committee, which he says is designed to shake up Albany.
Paterson declined to comment. Golisano shoveled a healthy dose of criticism on Albany’s political structure, and singled out unions for a stranglehold on politicians who are too eager to listen to the labor groups’ desire to spend and tax more. “The fact of the matter is this budget and this increase in the level of taxation are really going to push a lot more people out of the state,” he said in Rochester. He did not return calls.
But Stephen Madarasz, a spokesman for the Civil Service Employees Association, the biggest state and local government workers union, dismissed the criticism.
“It sounds like sour grapes and a little bit of greenmail,” he said of Golisano. He said the union’s job is merely to improve the economic well-being of its members. “All we’re trying to do is make New York a better place to live.”
There has been speculation that Golisano, a registered Republican, might try to run as the GOP candidate in 2010 for the first time after failing three previous attempts on the Independence Party line. That prospect is over if he moves to Florida, where he will legally have to live for at least 184 days a year in order to be considered a resident there for tax purposes.
But Golisano hinted that he still plans to play a role in New York politics. He could, of course, shower candidates with millions of dollars in donations as he did last year, but critics say he loses his standing to criticize Albany if he lives more than half the year in Florida.
“If he’s going to pick up his ball and leave the state because he doesn’t like the way the game is being played, how does he expect to have a meaningful impact on it?” Madarasz said.
But one government critic said there will be plenty more moving vans taking millionaires and billionaires from New York. “We are driving people away that can afford to leave the state, and that is a very sad commentary,” said Michael Long, chairman of the state’s Conservative Party.
Golisano and Long say that wealthy people leaving the state end up taking companies and jobs with them, and that the state’s high income and property taxes keep many more corporate executives from considering New York as a place to locate their businesses.
“People aren’t going to allow the government to reach into their pockets and take their net worth away that they have worked their entire life for,” Long said.
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