Mr. Wonderful thinks it’s a wonderful idea.
Kevin O’Leary mockingly celebrated Big Apple Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s proposed 9.5% property tax hike Tuesday as “bat cuckoo crazy” that will win him “Real Estate Agent of the Year” in the near future.
“What he is proposing is beyond insane, but I love it. You guys live here, you’re not paying your fair share. You got to pay 110%, that’s the right thing to do because he’s not cutting spending,” O’Leary said on CNN’s “NewsNight.”
Hizzoner announced the large tax increase as part of his proposed $127 billion preliminary budget plan earlier in the day.
The hike was part of a threat toward Albany and Gov. Kathy Hochul, unless they give him the income tax hike he wants on millionaires.
Mamdani said the tax hikes were only a “last resort” if the state government didn’t give him what he wanted.
“The options of the second path are the options of last resort, options that we will only employ if there is no other means of arriving at a balanced budget,” he said.
O’Leary claims Mamdani’s initiatives will push New Yorkers out of the Big Apple in a mass exodus that would benefit his own business in Florida.
“Probably sometime next year, within the next 12 to 18 months, I will meet him in Miami and give him real estate agent of the year award because I’m not happy with what’s happening.
“Everybody from New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts is moving into my neighborhood,” the “Shark Tank” star said about the frustrations with his new neighbors in Miami Beach. “I’m pissed off, and this guy’s just doing more of it.”
An enthusiastic O’Leary was told to stop yelling by host Abby Phillips as the panel discussed income tax hikes in the city over the past 10 years.
“I’m not mad about it, I’m excited, because I want you to pay not me,” O’Leary shot back.
The Post has reached out to City Hall.
“The View” co-host Ana Navarro sided with O’Leary, saying the targeted New Yorkers would find a way to get out of paying the taxes.
“When you put a hike on taxes just on the very wealthy, you run the risk of those very wealthy not paying it because they’ll find a way to have a loophole and skirt those taxes, even if it means moving to Indian Creek (Florida) and living in a billionaire’s bunker,” Navarro said.
“It’s not the person making a million dollars a year, which in New York it’s not as much as it sounds, it’s the person making $50 million that’s moving,” she added.
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