Governor David Paterson needs to close a big budget gap, that’s no surprise. But where he wants to make cuts and tax increases is another story. Some places that are drawing quite the attention of tax payers are a possible added tax on soda, clothing and even downloading songs from your I-pod. When we asked some post holiday shoppers what they though about this overall they were not impressed. Marwa Dehaibe is a student from DeWitt. As soon as her degree is done she plans on getting out of New York. “I don’t see how increasing taxes in the state that already has one of the highest tax rates in the nation is really going to help us. All it’s going to do is drive more people away.”
Boe Heintz is 14 and can’t go anywhere with out his I-pod. He says there are close to 400 songs that he’s downloaded on there. When we told him about paying more than 99 cents for a song, he was upset. “No. I won’t buy it anymore. I’ll just get it off some different site because some sites might keep their stuff the same or I’ll just get CD’s.”
Both Dehaibe and Heintz have other options for our governor. Dehaibe says, “Everyone in the country is working on cutting done their expenses and minimizing unnecessary expenses and that’s how everyone is surviving. I think if the government learned to do that…we would be good.”
Heintz has a blunter message for the governor, “I’m going to get him the biggest I-pod ever and he’s going to pay like $1000 plus dollars. I’m going to fill it up with thousands of songs and he’ll have to pay (the tax) for it.”
