Lower Income Taxes; Higher Non-Resident Taxes

That sounds unconstitutional. It would violate Interstate Commerce.

but of course they use far less of the city's services than full time residents so lets drive them away and increase resident's taxes. good plan.

What services do they use less of? They maintain property so they benefit from fire, police, etc. just the same way that anyone else does. How is it unconstitutional? We had a commuter tax for years and no one ever said that is unconstitutional.

no use of schools and to the extent that they are part time less use of police, garbage, mass transit. and they are paying property taxes.

mass transit--city income taxes do not subsidize it. police--protecting their (expensive) apartment and building happens regardless if the residents are here, westchester or hong kong. schools-- plenty of new yorkers don't use the schools either b/c they are single, married w/ no kids, empty nesters, etc. so the idea that second home residents are any different than many other new yorkers is incorrect. garbage--i'll give you that one.

>> place a tax on non-residents who own property (call it a property tax surcharge

anyone that owns property in the city pays property taxes...except of course for the tax abated; but that's a different topic and cuts across residents and non-residents. if they work in new york city they pay non-resident income tax. if they live in NYC part year they already pay prorated resident income tax as well.

BH, Florida has that system - they call it "homesteading" - and it's a nightmare. If you go to places like Miami Beach, you can pay $20,000 a year in property taxes alone on a $1 million apartment....

...if you rent it out. If you've lived there for years, an identical property might cost 1/4 of that in taxes.

Unfortunately, every time a property changes hands the tax is reset. So a new person moving in - even with the homestead exemption - would pay the $20,000 in taxes.

The smarter thing to do would be to normalize property taxes in the city so that everyone whose assessed value is the same pays the same. Why should a single-family $2 million townhouse in Park Slope pay $5,000 a year in property tax, when a new-dev condo worth $2 million pays about $18,000?

BrooklynHeights--actually, the commuter tax was ruled unconstitutional.

No, jordyn. What was ruled unconstitutional was charging it to NJ residents but not to NY residents. It is constitutional if everybody outside the city pays it.

if you want the new condo to pay the same as the PS brownstone of same value, then let's remove the 421a tax exemption. the city will be swimming in $$$ now rather than waiting 10-25 yrs.

421a is now dead - but that's not the problem. The problem is that property taxes are calculated differently for single-family homes (assessed value) and apartments (generally, imputed rent). It was done to appease the outer boroughs.