Posted on 02/21/2005 9:03:47 PM PST by TBP
AFTER struggling to fix up a brownstone in Harlem for the last 16 months, Meyghan Hill, a model and actress, and her husband, Daniel Scarola, a ballroom dancing instructor, are thinking about giving up and moving out. But what may drive them away is not the neighborhood, which they have come to love, nor their four-family house, where they have painstakingly stripped a century of varnish and paint from doors and balusters, but the shock of a tax notice they received last month from the New York City Department of Finance.
The notice indicated that the taxes on their 19-foot-wide house, only $4,100 when they bought it, would be going up in July to about $23,600, a fivefold increase of $19,000 - more, they say, than they can possibly afford after paying their hefty mortgage. Right now, they have no tenants.
Like thousands of other owners of homes and small apartment buildings, they have been abruptly caught up in a new campaign by city tax officials to enforce laws that allow them to raise taxes sharply when owners file for permits for major renovations of older buildings.
These large increases are being imposed at a time when state law requires the city to slowly phase in regular assessment increases for other homeowners over years or even a decade or more in some cases.
"We are panicked and we can't afford it, and if we sell, the price will be lower because of all the taxes," Ms. Hill said. "We are being punished for fixing up the building and trying to improve the neighborhood."
It turned out that while Ms. Hill was working on her modest renovation, with $60,000 in construction funds after a second mortgage fell through, city tax assessors were busily reviewing her filing with the Department of Buildings. The filing showed that she planned to convert a single-room-occupancy building to a four-family dwelling, and using its standard construction cost guidelines, the city increased the value of her home by $370,000.
The largest tax increases were in small apartment buildings and four-family brownstones, which pay a much higher tax rate than one- to three-family homes. For every $100 of improvements, they are being charged $5.50 in extra property tax, compared with 91 cents for owners of one- to three-family houses.
In short, the couple and other brownstone owners like them have been caught up this tax season in the netherworld of New York City's property tax system, which under state law protects the low taxes of some groups of taxpayers while allowing huge increases for others.
A review of tax assessment records shows that about 460 of these four-family houses and small apartment buildings were facing tax increases because of renovations, nearly three times the number the year before, including more than 260 row houses. Taxes are scheduled to rise by $10,000 or higher in more than 200 of these buildings, including 76 row houses, an increase from 20 the year before. The figures exclude buildings with city tax exemptions.
Martha E. Stark, the city finance commissioner, confirmed that in the last few months the department had reassigned 40 assessors, mainly from the Manhattan office, to catch up with a backlog of permits from several years ago, and to impose assessments for them.
She said that she was aware of concerns that the high assessment increases might lead some homeowners to delay maintenance or renovations and allow properties to decay, but that her assessors were fairly applying existing state property tax law. "Our job is to reflect the market value in property under state law," she said. "If this is unfair, we need to work to change the law."
Town houses on the East Side, West Side and downtown also saw their taxes rise, but the greatest increases, both in numbers and percentage of tax increased, appeared to be in Harlem and in parts of Brooklyn like Bedford-Stuyvesant; both are in the midst of a wave of renovation and reinvestment in older buildings.
I agree with your lack of sympathy. The city should give her an abatement that phases out completely over 15 years- to enccourage fixing up that crap hole.
What really frosts me is the projects in the city. The tenets were offered ownership and refused, because utlimately they would have to take on some responsibility. Those projects should be torn and developed. But they wont be because of the PC police. If those buildings were developed, then there would not be dicontinuities such as this.
How much you wanna bet that this "model and actress" and her "ballroom dancing instructor" husband vote Democrat? Or the other New York urbanites who are suddenly getting (even more) taxed into oblivion? And now what? They move out and infect some other place? I just hope they stay out of Pennsylvania - - we got enough scumbags here as it is, thank you.
New York City is beyond repair.
Think Los Angeles on LSD and you begin to get the picture.
Say I move into a house that I buy for $200,000, with an annual property tax of $4,000. It is a single-family home. I then put a deck on the back, maybe redo the kitchen. The local municipality comes along, reassesses it, and tells me my taxes will now be $6,000. Why? How is the increase justified? My house does not cost the town one extra penny, I have placed no additional burden on it.
The answer, of course, is that the government basically assumes that if you can afford to improve your property, then you can afford to give them a bit more "protection" money. But this ignores the fact that I am already punished whenever my income goes up by having to pay more in income tax.
Taxation as it stands today is a twisted mess.
Property taxes are in many ways worse than income taxes. Especially as the rates increase. It basically kills any ownership rights to property. $23000? Almost 2 grand per month? Just to be allowed to live there? Seems you could opt out of city and state services, pool you money with your neighbors, and buy better police, fire, and schools for much less.
They are being hit with the tax increase before they can complete the renovation. No renovation, no tenants.
I have zero sympathy for New York City. They still have rent control. People live for decades in rent controlled apartments for a few hundred dollars a month. These are not cold water flats - they're palatial pre-war buildings that would get thousands on the open market. The landlords are the ones getting hosed.
Other costs like schools, fire and police protection, etc. should be assessed based on a flat rate per housing unit by housing type (i.e., $X per unit for a single family home, $Y per unit for an apartment, etc.).
They are being hit with the tax increase because they are applying to convert the building to a four-family apartment building.
I agree. But I would also suggest that you figure out a way to deduct some of your rent on your income taxes -- by using part of your home for some kind of business venture, for example.
I got that. My point would be that they are being taxed now for what may be later. I think that is absurd.
A gymnast, a quarterback, and a professor of economics were marooned on a desert island. Searching for food, they found a coconut tree.
The gymnast tried to climb the tree to get at the cocoanuts, but could gain no purchase on the slippery branchless trunk.
The quarterback tried to slam the tree to shake some cocoanuts loose, but the vibrations didn't carry high enough.
The economist said, "Let's assume that we have a ladder...".
I may be wrong about that, but this is the sense I get from reading the article.
Schools should be assessed by the number of rug rats you produce, period.
I have no problem with that, but then you aren't really dealing with "public schools" anymore.
The article says the tax increase begins in July. I hope you're right or that they can get a stay on the increase. This is just a news article so we could both be wrong.
I gew up in the New York suburbs, in Westchester County. Part of the problem there is that we had county, town (township), and village or city government performing many of the same services and they all collected taxes for them. And because they were all doing them, none of them was providing the services well.
Well, then blame Patakifeller and his predecessors. But this sort of thing didn't happen when Rudy was Mayor.
They do. She siad as much on "Hannity and Colmes" last night. She didn't even seem to notice that Hannity, the conservative Republican, was the one who was sympathetic to her plight.
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