By Maria Tsvetkova
NEW YORK, Sept 29 (Reuters) – A Staten Island judge on Tuesday ordered New York City officials to mail new notices to homeowners it has determined must pay a new pied-à-terre tax, effectively calling for restarting the rollout of a surcharge on pricey secondary homes.
The ruling, which sided with a group of homeowners who had sued the city, came a week before the Oct. 6 deadline for homeowners who had been told they owed the tax to prove they should not be subject to the signature initiative of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration.
City Hall did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In his ruling, Wayne Ozzi, a state Supreme Court justice in Richmond County, said the steps the New York City department of finance took to begin collecting the tax caused “confusion and dismay” and appeared to result from a rush to fill budget gaps and unfairly put the burden on homeowners to prove properties were their primary residences.
Ozzi cited, for example, the release of what the finance department called a supplemental roll of more than 900,000 properties it said may be subject to the new tax. The city also sent letters to 17,000 homeowners informing them they owed the tax.
“No crime is involved here, but homeowners are being substantially harmed and penalized needlessly,” Ozzi wrote.
The judge ordered the department to remove the supplemental roll from its website, cancel the 17,000 mailings and use the most recently available tax and other information to determine who owes the tax and to draft new, individualized notices to mail out.
The new tax is expected to generate $500 million annually for the city, America’s largest.
Last month President Donald Trump called the tax a “dangerous political experiment” and said he was looking for legal options for the federal government to reverse it.
On Monday, former U.S. secretary of commerce Wilbur Ross and casino mogul Steve Wynn, who own property in New York City, sued the city over the pied-a-terre tax in a Long Island court, arguing that the tax on secondary homes unconstitutionally discriminates against nonresidents.
(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova; editing by Donna Bryson and Michael Perry)
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