Mayor Zohran Mamdani says New York City will continue moving forward with its controversial pied-à-terre tax, even after a judge ordered officials to redo key parts of the rollout from the beginning.
Mamdani dismissed the impact of Tuesday’s ruling in Staten Island Supreme Court during an unrelated Brooklyn news conference Wednesday. City Hall has already announced plans to appeal the decision.
“I fully believe that this law is constitutional, and we are moving to intervene in these suits because of that belief, and our commitment to standing alongside our partners in Albany to defend the surcharge,” the mayor told reporters when asked about the case.
Justice Wayne Ozzi ruled that the city must restart the notification process for owners of New York’s high-end second homes who could be responsible for the surcharge. He characterized the original effort as “arbitrary” and “capricious.”
Should the decision remain in effect, it could alter City Hall’s current Oct. 6 deadline for property owners who received notices to challenge them.
Benjamin Williams, a property-tax attorney with Rosenberg and Estis, PC, said he is advising clients to keep submitting appeals or registering for the tax until city officials provide clearer guidance on what the ruling means.
MUST READ: MAGA Governor Stumbles With Anti-Welfare Ad in Self-Inflicted Gaffe
“Owners should not assume the ruling gives them more time or that the tax is going away. Until there is clear direction from the court or the city, the best course is to protect your rights and meet the filing deadline,” Williams said in a statement to The Post.
Ozzi also ordered the city to reveal the records and information it relied on when deciding which properties were subject to the levy. The surcharge applies to homes assessed at more than $5 million and co-ops valued above $1 million.
The legal dispute followed the city’s mailing of 17,000 warning letters to homeowners. Officials later determined that about 1,200 recipients were exempt, while more than 6,700 others had already applied for exemptions.
The Department of Finance, which is managing the tax launch, added 24 employees after the troubled rollout. The agency also faced criticism for placing the names and addresses of roughly 900,000 New York homeowners in a publicly accessible database. Ozzi ordered that information taken offline.
Mamdani defended the policy Wednesday, describing the surcharge as a matter of fairness.
“It’s a tax about ensuring that those who own a luxury second home in our city pay their fair share towards making sure that our streets are safer, our schools are stronger, that our city is in fact the greatest city in the world,” he said.
