ERIE COUNTY, N.Y. (WKBW) — Erie County Legislator Jeanne Vinal is pushing to raise the income cap for the senior tax credit, a threshold that has not increased in eight years, as rising costs push more seniors out of eligibility.
Vinal, who represents District 5, wants to raise the household income limit from about $37,000 to $50,000 a year. The proposal carries a $7 million price tag, which she says the county can afford due to higher-than-expected sales tax revenue and millions in reimbursements.
"We're not trying to add more people on it. We're trying to not have people get off of it. So it's not giving, we, we did it like almost exactly, uh, just to avoid any criticism of it to almost exactly the cost-of-living adjustment, like literally rounding it around the $50,000," Vinal said.
Vinal's goal is to prevent seniors from losing eligibility for the tax break and being forced out of their homes.
"The course of their life, they have changes in their family and so forth that you might want to move, you might want to downsize, you might want to move in a condo, but you should make that choice. You shouldn't be taxed out of your house because you can't afford it," Vinal said.
The proposal gained momentum at a special public hearing, where Cheektowaga Town Supervisor Brian Nowak spoke about how the senior exemption works in his municipality. He noted that tax exemptions come with trade-offs.
"There's always trade-offs with these things that every dollar that is given out an exception, an exemption rather, whether it's the volunteer fireman's exemption or veterans' exemptions or religious exemptions or the senior exemptions, every dollar that those folks don't pay, other folks have to," Nowak said.
Nowak described Cheektowaga's current approach to the senior exemption.
"In our town we have a sliding scale for the senior exemption where anyone under $40,000 gets 50% off of their town tax bill and then it gradually steps up by 5 percentage points to a little over $48,000 right now," Nowak said.
If the Erie County Legislature does not vote on the proposal during its last legislative session this Thursday, the measure will be pushed to after the August recess, with the next opportunity on September 10. If approved, the increase in the senior tax credit would take effect in 2027.
