Stripping the Dying of Their Assets: Mamdani's Latest Proposal

By Betsy McCaughey

If New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani gets his way, half of everything New Yorkers work a lifetime for – including their homes, their businesses or farms, and their savings – could be stripped away on their deathbeds.

No more Empire State; he'd make it the Expropriation State.

Only one thing in life is certain: We all die.

Mamdani is exploiting that certainty to close what he claims is a $5.4 billion city budget gap.

More than that, he aims to undermine the foundations of American life by attacking wealth accumulation, homeownership, and private property, per the radical agenda of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Currently, New York is one of a handful of states that imposes a death tax, a 16 percent levy on estates worth more than $7 million.

But last week, the tax wish list Mamdani circulated to state legislators and Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed lowering the threshold to a mere $750,000 – which would clobber millions more New Yorkers all across the state with a punishing tax.

He would also hike the rate to a whopping 50 percent, two and a half times the next highest rate – 20 percent, charged in Hawaii and Washington state.

The worst feature of Mamdani's tax proposal is its built-in "cliff," meaning that once an estate hits $750,000 in value, the confiscatory 50 percent rate applies to all assets, not just the amount above that figure.

Half the estate gets wiped out, and Albany steps in to take it.

Consider: The average home value in Westchester County right now is $823,340, while the median home price in Nassau County is a staggering $875,000.

Even assuming no other assets, the legacy of most Westchester and Nassau homeowners would fall into the tax collector's hands.

Bruce Blakeman, Hochul's Republican rival for governor in November, quickly pounced on the issue, calling it "the most extreme Death Tax in America."

"Children will lose half the value of their parents' home...and family businesses will have to be sold off just to pay this cruel tax," he stated in a social media post.

Hochul herself, though, has been silent on Mamdani's pitch.

And while it's unlikely she'll actively back something so radical, Mamdani has now injected the idea into the political conversation in Albany.

Mamdani's outrageous 50 percent rate is just a first bid: You can bet that his allies in the leftist state legislature will impose some form of estate-tax hike soon.

You won't hear Mamdani's voters complaining – he's the mayor of renters.

A majority of New Yorkers statewide – 51 percent – own their own homes, but in New York City, the figure is a mere 32 percent.

Mamdani swept into City Hall on a promise to freeze rents and increase government power over housing; the homeownership ideal, and the dream of passing your home and your prosperity to your kids, is antithetical to him and his democratic socialist compatriots.

Even a watered-down version of Mamdani's proposal would devastate New York's farming industry, 98 percent of which is made up of family farms.

The average net farm income is $76,281 – hardly even middle class – but based on current land values, the majority of those farms would fall into the state's clutches under Mamdani's proposal.

The irony is, raising the estate tax would likely be a net revenue loser, costing the state tax dollars instead of increasing them.

Economists Enrico Moretti and Daniel J. Wilson have found that when states with high income-tax rates hike the estate tax as well, high earners flee, causing more loss of tax revenue than gain.

"You can either be progressive on income tax or be progressive on adopting an estate tax, but if you do both, it's going to backfire," they concluded.

The highest earners flee to death-friendlier states, simply to preserve family wealth.

Mamdani claims he's pushing confiscatory taxes because he needs money to close the city's budget gap.

New York City's budget is larger than the budget of the state of Florida, which has nearly three times as many people. 

Let him cut spending if he needs some breathing room.

Truth is, Mamdani and his DSA allies in the state legislature oppose private property and will use any pretext to confiscate it.

Don't let these radicals, elected by urban voters who don't care a whit about homeownership, small businesses or family farming, destroy the lifetime dreams of millions of New Yorkers.

Whether you usually vote Republican or Democratic, it's time to sound the alarm – before this un-American attack on property rights picks up any more steam.

Betsy McCaughey is a former Lt. Governor of New York State and Chairman & Founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths at www.hospitalinfection.org. Follow her on X @Betsy_McCaughey.