The Citizens Budget Commission (CBC), a nonpartisan think tank, argued that millionaires are crucial to funding New York City’s critical services and the city should work to retain them.

“Millionaires are critical to New York’s tax base. In 2012, they comprised less than 1 percent of New York State’s and New York City’s resident filers, yet paid 44 percent and 40 percent of State and City’s personal income taxes, respectively,” the CBC said in a Thursday report.

“New York’s millionaires are critically important to the fiscal and economic viability of New York. There is perhaps no better way to fund critically needed services than to retain and grow millionaires in New York,” the group added.

“Not retaining, attracting, or increasing the number of millionaires has an unseen cost,” the report added.

The report comes amid the rise of New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist who shocked political observers in June with a victory over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) in the Democratic primary. 

In an interview on CNN in June, the outlet’s Erin Burnett questioned Mamdani about his view of capitalism.

“Do you like capitalism?” Burnett asked.

“No, I have many critiques of capitalism,” Mamdani responded.

Mamdani also told NBC News’s Kristen Welker in June that he didn’t believe “that we should have billionaires because, frankly, it is so much money in a moment of such inequality.”