A New Assessment Each Year
Each January, the New York City issues a new assessment for the almost one million tax parcels on its assessment roll. Unlike many other municipalities, New York sets a new market value for each tax parcel every year.
Appealing Your Property Tax Assessment
Once the City’s Department of Finance publishes the assessment roll, taxpayers have about 6 weeks — to March 1 — to file a property tax appeal with the Tax Commission. In May, the assessment roll becomes final and the assessments on that roll are used to compute property tax bills due in July. Taxpayers who failed to challenge their assessments by March 1, cannot contest the July tax bills. the assessment roll, to March 1 for property owners to file an application to correct their assessment with the New York City Tax Commission.
The New York City Property Tax Appeal Calendar
On January 15, New York City publishes its assessments for the new year. These assessments are used to compute your property tax bill due the following July. You must file an appeal by March 1.
The Tax Commission Calendar and Process
The New York City Tax Commission is a city agency with the power to review and reduce property tax assessments. The law requires that all assessment challenges begin with the filing of a property tax reduction application at the Tax Commission.
The Tax Commission receives over 50,000 applications each year. To review these applications, the Commission holds hearings from April through December. After a hearing, the Tax Commission may make an offer to reduce a property owner’s assessment. Many, if not most, of the Tax Commission assessment reductions are issued after the July 1 property tax bill due date. In these cases, the City will issue a refund for the overpaid property taxes.
Under law, an appeal of the Tax Commission’s decision must be filed by October 24th. In some cases, the Tax Commission will not have issued a decision before a property owner is required to appeal that decision. In other cases, a taxpayer may not have even had a hearing.
A 2nd Tax Commission Hearing / Court Proceedings
The filing of a petition serves two important purposes. First, it keeps the property tax challenge for that year’s assessment open. If no petition is filed, then a property owner is foreclosed from any possibility of a reduction in the future. That reduction may happen at the Tax Commission or it may happen in a court proceeding.
If a taxpayer files a petition and files an application with the Tax Commission to challenge the next year’s assessment, the Tax Commission will conduct a two year review, doing a first examination of the new assessment, and a second review of the petitioned year’s assessment. If the owner still gets no (or inadequate) relief from the Tax Commission, that year remains open. The assessment can be reviewed as part of a the court proceeding that was initiated when the petition was filed. For the most part, these proceedings will be informal and consist of negotiations between the owner’s attorney and attorneys for the City, under the supervision of a judge. The large majority of these cases are settled. The settlement terms are documented in an order signed by the judge. In rare instances, these cases can result in a non-jury trial.
Condominiums
New York State law allows a condominium’s board of managers to file property tax appeals on behalf of the individual unit owners. This makes the condominium appeal process similar to that of a coop building, where a single filing is done for all the coop shareholders (i.e., unit owners).