Springtime
means the start of baseball season. It's the time to put away winter
coats and plan a seder or Easter egg hunt. It also marks the beginning
of an increasingly popular pastime in New York: fighting property tax
bills.
Last week
the city began holding hearings at which people can argue that their
home or office building is not worth as much as assessors say. A record
55,000 tax appeals have been filed this year, and though the rules say
no hearing is supposed to last more than 15 minutes, it nevertheless is
likely to take until November for the 20 hearing officers at the city
Tax Commission to clear the dockets.
"It's a long, long season," Myrna Hall, the commission's operations director, said with a sigh.
The season has grown even longer in the past decade as more people protest their ever-rising property tax bills.
These days
about 35% more appeals are filed each year than were filed a decade ago.
That's more than triple the growth rate of new properties on the tax
rolls. Property taxes are the city's largest source of income, and
revenue from them has doubled in the past 10 years, reflecting a surge
in real estate values and rents.
Click here for the full article.
Source: Crain's New York Business (via The Empire Report)
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