President backs Cuomo in election eve Truth Social post as Mamdani hits back at Trump’s ‘threat – it is not the law’
On the eve of New York’s well-watched mayoral election, Donald Trump issued a threat to its voters: stop Zohran Mamdani or pay.
“If Communist Candidate Zohran Mamdani wins the Election for Mayor of New York City, it is highly unlikely that I will be contributing Federal Funds, other than the very minimum as required, to my beloved first home,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “I don’t want to send, as President, good money after bad.”
Trump’s comments echo those broadcast on Sunday during his appearance on CBS’s 60 minutes, in which he said: “It’s gonna be hard for me as the president to give a lot of money to New York, because if you have a communist running New York, all you’re doing is wasting the money you’re sending there.”
That’s not really how it works - there’s no one big sack of cash that gets handed over by the state, individual businesses (and people) pay their taxes to the IRS directly, and then separately to the state tax agencies (obvs leaving out some of the draconian nuance here). States don’t have a practical method of withholding taxes short of going to every business and demanding they stop paying the feds. While hypothetically possible at some point, it’s not in the short term feasible.
There is a big sack of cash that gets handed over by the state: the federal payroll taxes for all the state government employees.
In comparison to all federal taxes payed out by people within a state, that’s a pretty miniscule sack of cash. The government is among the largest employers in every state true, but their payroll contributions aren’t anything compared to the whole and they’re paltry compared to things like business-derived tax revenue. States could withhold them, yes, but it wouldn’t do much if they did.
I’m not comparing to the whole. I’m comparing to states sitting on their hands and doing nothing in the face of a rogue government in D.C. that’s pulling shit like withholding disaster relief to blue states.
Federal payroll taxes for California state government workers, just using the portion that the employer pays, total ~$22 billion a year. And let’s say there’s another ~$15 billion for New York. Now imagine every blue state withholds theirs. Seems like a good chunk of change.
It’s not nothing, but it’s really just not very much in context. Together those make up around the same amount trump is causally refusing to release from the SNAP emergency funds (~$33 billion) and that shortfall is being mitigated. Not trivially, it would be awesome to have that cash and people will feel it, but cutting those funds off for a full year would result in something like two weeks of reduced SNAP benefits or a couple days of federal furlough.
I disagree. I think having everyone send their federal taxes to a state entity for leverage purposes would be an interesting development. The individual is protected, and the state holds the bag.
How would the individual be protected from the IRS if they are penalized by the IRS for non-payment of taxes. Just because you sent a check to some state entity doesn’t mean those federal taxes have been paid, and that state entity likely wouldn’t have the authority or resources to protect you from the IRS.
It would be kind of like sending your mortgage payment to your lawyer when you have a dispute with your bank. You still owe that money to the bank, and they can take action for non-payment.
Some jurisdictions allow escrow payment when in a legal conflict, in which case you actually might be sending money to your lawyer instead
… Probably doesn’t apply for US taxes, but it’s a thing
Well, kinda. But in this example, you’ve put the money in escrow, which gives you protection while everything plays out in court
But you as an individual won’t be suing the IRS so escrow makes no sense in this case.
Yes, but you’ve also separated the money and put it under the care of a third party. And presumably, you’d do this as a matter of state law
When the IRS comes knocking, you can say “sure thing, your money is over there, as according to local laws”. The IRS can then sue you, but you followed the law and set the money aside - clearly you weren’t attempting to avoid paying
Which realistically means the federal government needs to sue the state, either to overturn the state law or collect all the money
I’m confused, sorry: what are you disagreeing with?
That seems like a trivial position to take.