The takes were scorching hot last week after the county dropped the Ulster County For Fair Taxes Act (FTA) on May 22. Our political and business columnists didn’t like it, and they were joined by most of the voices talking about it on social media. Hot takes are fine — your Editorial Team produces a fair amount of heat itself in our opinion foundry and the first-blush reaction is oftentimes the most honest one.

But hot takes are like Doritos — they’re tasty, but hardly sustainable as a dietary base. Now that a lot more is known about the act, we thought it high time that we took a more analytical look at the matter.

Let’s begin with the facts we have. (We will be using both the official county web page on the FTA and John Quigley’s highly detailed independent analysis on his new website; our thanks to both.)

To summarize, what’s being proposed is a surtax on county residents making more than $200,000 and filing taxes as a single person or more than $400,000 and filing jointly. Like anything having to do with income tax, exactly how much FTA-eligible will have to pay is a little tricky. In a way it’s a tax on a tax, but we’ll let the county explain: “[The FTA] would function as a 16.75 percent surcharge on the state income tax paid on income above those thresholds — not to total income. This would work out to be an approximately 1.5 percent tax on income above the threshold.” As an example, the county offers a breakdown for a household making $500,000 a year. The total state tax on that figure is $34,250; the amount paid on the income over the FTA joint-filers threshold of $400,000 is $6,850. That figure is then multiplied by 0.1675 to get the final surtax, in this case $1,147.

How many people will be affected by the surtax?

The county expresses it as one in every 42 Ulster households. John Quigley notes that there’s a little over 5,600 people with incomes over $200,000, but notes this number isn’t the whole picture because, as he puts it, “joint filers below $400,000 and threshold/credit details are not fully visible in aggregate data.” Let’s say the actual number works out to be around 6,000 people. The U.S. Census Bureau’s current population estimate sits at around 183,000. According to our math, the FTA-eligibles amount to 3.3 percent of Ulster residents — more than three times the “1 percent” blamed by progressives to be responsible for the totality of human failure in modern society. We’ll pass, for now, on the “how rich is $200,000 a year, really?” question, except to note that to someone scraping by on a fourth or less of that, $200K seems quite wealthy indeed.

How much is county government expecting to take in from the surtax?

The Ulster website has it as $10-20 million a year. Quigley’s stats-driven estimate comes up with $14.8 million; we were just going to split it down the middle and say $15 million. Let’s say the surtax was in effect last year. The county’s property tax levy for its 2026 budget is $74 million, which means the FTA surtax would generate a figure equal to just about 20 percent of the property tax levy. One of the questions we had at the outset was if this legislation would have a real impact or was just performative, i.e., intended more to burnish everybody’s “tax the rich” credentials. Of course, both can be true at the same time, but the numbers say it will be a substantial boost to county finances.

Where do we go from here, and how soon can we expect this to take effect?

Relax, everybody: like anything having to do with governance in the Empire State, it’s a process. FTA backers last week announced that our local people in the state legislature, Assemblywoman Sarahana Shrestha and Sen. Michelle Hinchey, have introduced an enabling “home rule” resolution which must be passed by both houses and signed into law by the governor. As the legislative session is ending within days, it will have to wait until the next session in early 2027.

But that’s only a part of the process. The county will have to pass its own law establishing the FTA, which means there will be at least two public hearings on it. When the hearing dates are firmed up, mark your calendars — they should be fun.

Where are we on this? Your Editorial Team is not ready to say. We’re pleased that there will be a thorough public vetting of this proposal, and we’ll probably wait for that to happen before we say yay or nay. We will note, however, that once again, Ulster is in the vanguard of a budding national movement — the abortion question as it relates to the county clerk is another recent instance, but don’t forget that a similar bold vision of the future by some in New Paltz was a high-profile and significant step on the road to legal same-sex marriage across the country.

One concern we will share: Unless it’s offset by a reduction in property taxes, this new tax is a windfall for the county and therefore needs to be well-justified. We’ve written in this space before that we believe the people of Kingston and Ulster County are overtaxed as it is — extracting more private money for government purposes makes this problem worse, not better. While we understand that the FTA will affect only those who can afford it, we would like to see whatever comes in from the FTA be used to offset property taxes, which are a clear burden to pretty much all of us. If not that, then that money should be placed in a dedicated fund to directly help the neediest among us. If it ends up in the general fund, the FTA money becomes just another revenue stream for the increasingly hungry maw of the county budget. We also think it’s an open question whether this pool of money does better for Ulster’s economy by being spent by individuals rather than county government.

We suggest studying the facts and thinking about what may happen, good, bad and unintended, if the Ulster County For Fair Taxes Act becomes law. Meanwhile, we’re trying to figure out how to put up a new bet on the popular prediction markets website Kalshi — which will we see first, the Hudson Valley Power Authority or the Fair Taxes Act?