By Tom Topousis

Finally, someone is fighting for the rich guys. A group of powerful business organizations is preparing to fight a proposed “millionaire’s tax” they say will drive affluent New Yorkers out of state. Taxpayers for an Affordable NY includes the Business Council of New York, the Real Estate Board of New York, and the Rent Stabilization Association – a trio of groups that came together once before, in the early 1990s, to fight property tax hikes. “We’ll be hurting ourselves because some of those people will move out of the state, and whatever we generate in the first round of taxes will be lost in the second round,” said Steven Spinola, head of the Real Estate Board. Spinola said 4 percent of New Yorkers in what is currently the highest tax bracket pay 54 percent of the state’s income tax. Democratic lawmakers have proposed increasing the top tax rate from 6.8 percent to as much as 10.3 percent. The taxpayers group has mailed out notices to 150,000 taxpayers, calling on them to contact their state senators to block the increase, which would boost tax rates to 8.25 percent for incomes of $250,000 to 10.3 percent for those over $1 million.