A New York restaurant owner who was forced to lay off almost half of his staff due to the coronavirus outbreak is asking Gov. Andrew Cuomo to let businesses keep their sales tax for a month.
“If it’s a one-time or two-time forgiveness, it would just keep us all afloat,” Tony Palermo told WHEC News in his Magnolia restaurant this week.
“It’ll give us a small influx of cash that, instead of giving it to them, to pay rent, to pay insurances, to keep people employed even on the small scale we’re doing, and it would take a burden off us to know that we don’t have to dish out the thousands to them,” Palermo said.
Cuomo recently ordered that restaurants in the state be limited to delivery and take-out only and also ordered the closing of movie theaters, gyms, and casinos.
The governor addressed the idea of easing taxes but said the state was not financially capable of doing that.
“I’d love to say to everybody in the state: I know you’re having a tough time — nobody pay any tax,” he said. “I would love to do that. I’ve cut taxes. I’ve cut taxes every year. But we’re not in a fiscal position to do that.”
The CEO of the New York State Restaurant Association released a statement echoing Palermo’s call to relax the tax burden on businesses while these restrictions are in place.
“The state’s entire restaurant industry is in dire straits,” the statement read. “From the North Fork of Long Island to North Tonawanda, restaurants are closed and, undoubtedly, many will never reopen. During this uncertain time, these businesses still have obligations that must be met — such as payments to suppliers, rent and taxes — with little to no revenue coming in. We urge the State to push back the due date for sales tax payments to alleviate the financial burden on these businesses. Without this, hundreds of thousands of restaurant jobs will be in further jeopardy.”
