ALBANY — Gov. Cuomo has tapped bankers, investors and a former state Republican chairman to help rewrite New York’s tax code.
Investment-banking adviser Peter Solomon and ex-Citicorp Vice President Carl McCall, a former state comptroller and city school-board president, will co-chair the Tax Reform and Fairness Commission, Cuomo announced yesterday.
Cuomo said the group will aim to make the state’s tax code “simpler and more fair” while helping to “reduce the tax burden faced by New Yorkers and businesses.” He’s asking for “revenue-neutral policy recommendations.”
Former state GOP Chairman J. Patrick Barrett is on the panel, which includes at least one liberal: James Parrott of the labor-union-backed Fiscal Policy Institute.
The current Cuomo-engineered income-tax code, which cut rates modestly for $40,000- to $300,000-a-year earners this year while significantly boosting scheduled rates for seven-figure earners, expires at the end of his first term, on Dec. 31, 2014.
Other commission members named yesterday are Dall Forsythe, budget director for Gov. Cuomo’s father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo and son of the actor John Forsythe; state Tax Commissioner Thomas Mattox; Guggenheim Partners Executive Chairman Alan Schwartz; former Mario Cuomo state tax commissioner James Wetzler, M&T Bank chairman and CEO Robert Wilmers and Deborah Wright, chair, president and CEO of Carver Bancorp and Carver Federal Savings bank.