NYC Property Tax Overhaul Seen Yielding $4 Billion for de Blasio
Martin Z. Braun
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s vision of raising income taxes to pay for pre-kindergarten and after-school programs would generate $530 million a year. By revamping property taxes -- and taking on some of New York’s richest residents -- he could get eight times as much.
De Blasio, a self-described progressive Democrat, was elected on a promise to reduce income inequality in a city where the richest 1 percent took home almost 40 percent of all earnings in 2012. New York’s property-tax structure does little to reduce that divide and may even widen it.
The real estate levy, the city’s biggest revenue source, uses a methodology that undervalues condominiums on Park Avenue, Central Park West and other enclaves of the wealthy; limits tax increases for owners in brownstone neighborhoods such as Greenwich Village and Park Slope; and shifts the heaviest burden to renters, many of them poor.
While almost half of all city property value belongs to owners of one-, two- and three-family houses, they pay only 15 percent of the $21 billion in annual real-estate taxes, according to the Citizens Budget Commission, a business-backed watchdog. Making the system fairer could raise more than $4 billion a year, the New York-based group said.
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