Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who made his 2018 tax return public on Monday, earns a government salary, but he also has a blind trust to supplement his income. In total, the governor grossed $211,289 in 2018 and paid a total of $51,384 in state and federal taxes. He is due a small refund on the state side.

The governor has constantly protested changes in the federal tax law that hurt New Yorkers because their state and local tax deductions are now capped.

"You have a federal government that is assaulting the state of New York," Cuomo has said. "They might as well have declared war on the state of New York."

But Cuomo actually paid a lower federal tax rate this year compared to last, thanks to the tax cuts that President Donald Trump signed into law at the end of 2017. Cuomo paid about $55,000 in federal and state taxes in 2017. His 2018 income was taxed at a federal rate of 18.5 percent, compared to 19.6 percent the previous year.

Cuomo's salary last year was $179,000. On top of that, he has a blind trust, which invests in stocks and equities. He pulled in $40,182 last year from those assets, but separate holdings actually saw a net loss of $30,599.

Cuomo made the same 2018 charitable donation in the same amount as he did in 2017: $11,000 to HELP USA, a charity he founded years ago to fight homelessness.

The governor is set to get a pay increase. His salary jumps to $200,000 this year and will reach $250,000 in 2021 and make Cuomo the highest-paid governor in the nation.

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Information from the Associated Press was used in this story.



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