Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll find out about the inflation refund checks that New York State is mailing some taxpayers. We’ll also find out what subway and bus riders will be paying starting in January.
If you’re one of roughly 800,000 people across New York State, a check for as much as $400 may have landed in your mailbox in the last few days. Or one may arrive in a day or so. If not, your name could be on one of some 7.4 million checks that haven’t gone out yet. The state’s Department of Taxation and Finance in Albany says the post office there can handle only 200,000 checks a day. The first batch went out last Thursday. The last won’t be mailed until mid-November. The state calls them “inflation refund checks.” They are a product of the budget deal that Gov. Kathy Hochul and leaders of the Assembly and the State Senate agreed to in the spring. They’re aimed at middle-class taxpayers, to compensate for higher prices since the pandemic. The checks vary by income level. Here’s who will get what:
Married taxpayers who file separately will receive the same income-dependent refunds as single taxpayers. The Department of Taxation and Finance will decide what to send based on the income you claimed on your resident income tax return. This is a refund you can’t apply for — the checks will go out automatically to the address on your 2024 return. If you have moved since then or haven’t filed your 2024 return yet, you can update your address online. And the payments are old-fashioned checks. No electronic deposits, even if you were eligible for a refund when you filed your return and the state put the money in your bank account by direct deposit. But it’s taxable (by the I.R.S.)The state says the income refund checks are considered taxable by the federal government but not by New York State, so you should declare the amount you receive on your 2025 federal return. That would cut the value of your $200 inflation refund check to $156 if you’re in the 22 percent tax bracket, according to a spokesman for the state Department of Taxation and Finance. The department said the checks are going out in the order in which tax returns for 2023 were processed. “The earlier you filed,” a spokesman said, “the earlier you’ll get your inflation refund check.” That’s assuming that your return went through smoothly. The department doesn’t count a return as “processed” until it has looked over it. If you forgot to sign it or you didn’t list what you earned on that second job and the department sent it back for you to correct, the department does not consider your return processed until you send back the corrected version. How the checks came aboutHochul ended 2024 promising to help middle-class New Yorkers with incentives including “inflation refund” checks that the state could afford because sales tax revenue had climbed in lock step with higher consumer prices. Budget watchdogs said the initial $3 billion cost was too high. They also questioned whether that much money wouldn’t be better spent on offsetting the Trump administration’s budget cuts. Hochul persevered, even as Democrats in the State Senate countered that the refunds should be limited to seniors and disbursed as tax credits, which would have avoided cash payouts. The plan that eventually emerged called for a total payout of $2 billion. But it retained income, not age, as the eligibility factor and refund checks, not tax credits, as the payment method. When Hochul announced last week that the first inflation reduction checks were going out, her office cited reports from the Federal Reserve indicating that 37 percent of adults could not cover an unexpected expense of $400 with cash and would have to borrow the money or sell something. The inflation reduction checks can offer a cushion and “a sense of relief for unexpected repairs or emergencies,” her office said. WEATHER Today will be sunny and breezy with a high near 69. Tonight, the sky will be mostly clear with a low near 52. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until tomorrow (Yom Kippur). The latest New York news
We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Subway and bus fares are going up
It’s going to cost more to ride subways and buses in 2026. Transit officials approved a 10-cent increase for fares, pushing the fare to $3, from $2.90 — a 3.4 percent increase. Fares on commuter railroads operated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that runs the city’s subways and buses, will also inch up. Weekly and monthly tickets on the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North will increase by as much as 4.5 percent. One-way fares will jump by as much as 8 percent. Tolls on bridges and tunnels run by the M.T.A. will increase by about 7.5 percent. The toll for most vehicles going through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel will rise to $7.46, from $6.94. The higher fares, approved by the M.T.A. board on Tuesday, will take effect on Jan. 4, the beginning of the first full week of the new year. They are expected to bring in additional revenue of $350 million a year for the agency’s roughly $20 billion annual operating budget. The M.T.A. has defended the price bump, its first since 2023, as reasonable in a time of inflation. Janno Lieber, the authority’s chief executive, said the fare increases were smaller than those that had gone into effect recently at other transit systems. But the increase is slightly ahead of the 3.2 percent rise in consumer prices for the 12 months ending in August. More than 40 people signed up to address the M.T.A. board before it approved the new fares and tolls. Many said the higher fares were onerous. Christian Joseph, a member of the Fare Ain’t Fair Coalition, an advocacy group that opposes fare increases, said higher costs could drive more people to jump the turnstiles. But the Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog group, endorsed the fare increase as a way to protect the authority’s budget at a time when some funding sources remain uncertain. METROPOLITAN DIARY Hidden world
Dear Diary: My phone died on 23rd Street, leaving me stranded with a dead battery and zero sense of direction in Manhattan’s supposedly foolproof grid system. “Hudson Yards?” I asked a man walking past me. “Jimmy,” he said, introducing himself and shaking my hand. “You’re headed the wrong way, friend.” He turned west, and I fell into step beside him. Within two blocks, he had opened a window into a world I’d never noticed. “See the circles?” he said, gesturing to the manhole covers beneath our feet. “That’s Con Edison, electrical stuff. The hexagons are telephone lines.” “Con Edison’s got thousands of these scattered around,” he continued. “N.Y.C. sewer covers too.” I looked down. Every cover told a different story. “People think I’m odd,” Jimmy said with a gentle smile, “but I collect pictures of these things. Got about three hundred so far. My daughter says it’s strange, but I tell her somebody’s got to pay attention to what keeps this city breathing.” We passed a Duane Reade. Jimmy waved at the cashier through the window. “That’s Miguel,” he said. “Been there eight years. Heart of gold.” At 30th Street, Jimmy pointed ahead. “See those towers?” he said. “That’s your Hudson Yards. Not much to look at, but you can’t miss them.” Before I could thank him properly, he was on his way, probably to discover more hidden patterns. — Ishani Patel Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Makaelah Walters and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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