5 minNews
New York City sends 11,000 more pied-à-terre tax letters, clears 1,210 owners
New York City's Department of Finance is sending a second wave of pied-à-terre tax notices to roughly 10,800 property owners while apologizing to 1,210 owners wrongly targeted in the first round because the agency lacked access to 2025 tax returns at the time.
New York City's Department of Finance is sending a second wave of pied-à-terre tax letters to roughly 10,800 property owners, even as it mails a very different kind of notice to others from the first round, telling them the city made a mistake. About 1,210 owners who received letters this summer warning they might owe the surcharge are now being cleared outright, according to new court filings disclosed this week.
The reason has nothing to do with a change in the law and everything to do with timing. New York State sent the city's Department of Finance preliminary 2025 income-tax records on Aug. 12, several months earlier than the agency would normally begin receiving them. Of that group, 630 owners were cleared because their 2025 tax returns listed the property as their primary home address; another 580 were cleared using a mix of 2025 extension filings and 2024 returns.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani addressed the rollout at a Wednesday press conference, acknowledging that the city sent out roughly 17,000 to 18,000 letters without having access to the 2025 income tax filings. He noted the timing wasn't unusual on the state's end: 2025 filings are typically released in February of the next calendar year, and the state simply gave the department early access this time.
Randy Mastro, the attorney suing the city over the rollout, made his thoughts known in the court filing. He argued that many thousands fewer property owners are subject to the surcharge than the administration originally boasted when it flooded the landscape with threatening mailed notices. Mastro also said the city has effectively admitted that some people who received the letters do not actually owe the surcharge, and he argued the timing undercuts the city's excuse: the city obtained 2025 tax information within five days after the lawsuit was filed on Aug. 7, which he claimed is evidence the department could have gotten the same data before mailing anything.
Mamdani laid out three categories of properties the city is targeting. One is properties owned by a corporate entity like an LLC or a trust, about 6,400 households, where the department doesn't have enough information on the primary residence holder. The 1,210 owners who were being cleared make up the second category. The third category, about 4,400 households, consists of properties where the department doesn't have 2025 tax returns that would indicate whether they are primary residences. The first and third categories make up the 10,800 letters going out to people.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who stood alongside Mamdani when the tax was first announced in April, said this week she wasn't a fan of the rollout and that City Hall was working to correct the problems. Mamdani, at the same press conference, held firm on the tax's revenue target, saying the city continues to be confident in its assessment of what the annual revenue will look like.
A Department of Finance spokesperson defended the process, saying the city has been committed from the beginning to ensuring that New Yorkers have the time and information they need. Property owners have until Oct. 6 to file an exemption application. The spokesperson noted the city has received the tax information from the state for 2025 and wants to give New Yorkers more time to apply for an exemption, if applicable. Mamdani noted Oct. 6 isn't necessarily the final word for owners who miss it, saying they can still appeal to the tax commission until early next year.
The pied-à-terre tax initially began as a Tax Day pitch. Mamdani and Hochul announced it in April, with Mamdani unveiling the plan in a video filmed outside Citadel billionaire Ken Griffin's $238 million penthouse. The state legislature passed it May 27, and Hochul signed it the next day. The rollout is what actually caused the uproar. The department's supplemental roll, meant to flag properties that might owe the surcharge, ballooned into an unfiltered list of nearly a million properties, instantly branded a rich hit list online, and united the ultrawealthy and merely well-off alike in opposition once thousands of legitimate primary residences got needlessly swept into the department's notices. That confusion is now the subject of Mastro's active lawsuit.
