New York City’s Department of Finance is sending a second wave of pied-à-terre tax letters to roughly 10,800 property owners, even as it mails a very different kind of letter to other owners from the first round, telling them, in effect, never mind.
Roughly 17,000 owners received a notice this summer warning they might owe the surcharge, which applies only to non-primary residences amounts, with a rate of 0.8%–1.3% on homes over $5 million and 4%-6.5% on condos and co-ops over $1 million. But 1,210 are now being cleared outright, according to new court filings disclosed this week.
The reason has nothing to do with a change in the law and everything to do with timing: New York State sent the city’s DOF preliminary 2025 income-tax records on Aug. 12, several months earlier than the agency would normally begin receiving them. Of that group, 630 owners were cleared because their 2025 tax returns listed the property as their primary home address; another 580 were cleared using a mix of 2025 extension filings and 2024 returns.
“So by my last count, I think we sent out less than 20,000, ‘you may be subject to’ letters, I think it was about 17,000 or 18,000. And at the time that we sent those out, we did not have access to the 2025 income tax filings,” said Mayor Zohran Mamdani at a Wednesday press conference. He noted the timing wasn’t unusual on the state’s end: 2025 filings are “typically released in February of the next calendar year,” and the state simply gave DOF early access this time.
Randy Mastro, the attorney suing the city over the rollout (and a longtime suer of the city in general), made his thoughts known in the court filing. “There are many thousands fewer property owners subject to this surcharge than this administration originally boasted when it flooded the landscape with 17,000 threatening Mailed Notices.”
“The City has now effectively admitted” that some people who received the letters, Mastro said, “do not actually owe this surcharge.” He also argued the timing undercuts the city’s excuse: “The City admits that, after this lawsuit was filed on August 7, it obtained 2025 tax information within five days,” which is evidence, he claimed, that DOF could have gotten the same data before mailing anything, not just after being sued.
Mamdani laid out three categories of properties the city is targeting. One is properties owned by a corporate entity like an LLC or a trust, about 6,400 households, where DOF doesn’t have enough information on primary residence holder. The 1,210 owners who were being cleared make up the second category. The third category, about 4,400 households, consists of properties where DOF doesn’t have 2025 tax returns that would indicate whether they are primary residences. The first and third categories make up the 10,800 letters going out to people.
A rocky rollout
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who stood alongside Mamdani when the tax was first announced in April, said this week she “wasn’t a fan of the rollout” and that City Hall was working to correct the problems. Mamdani, at the same press conference, held firm on the tax’s revenue target: “We continue to be confident in that assessment of what the annual revenue will look like.”
A DOF spokesperson, defending the process, said: “From the beginning, we have been committed to ensuring that New Yorkers have the time and information they need. Property owners have until October 6th to file an exemption application. We have received the tax information from the state for 2025 and want to give New Yorkers more time to apply for an exemption, if applicable.”
Mamdani noted Oct. 6 isn’t necessarily the final word for owners who miss it. “If New Yorkers still want to appeal an assessment, they can still appeal to the tax commission until early next year.”
New York City’s pied-à-terre tax initially began as a Tax Day pitch. Mamdani and Hochul announced it in April, with Mamdani unveiling the plan in a video filmed outside Citadel billionaire Ken Griffin’s $238 million penthouse. The state legislature passed it May 27, and Hochul signed it the next day.
The rollout is what actually caused the uproar. DOF’s supplemental roll, meant to flag properties that might owe the surcharge, ballooned into an unfiltered list of nearly a million properties, instantly branded a “rich hit list” online, and united the ultrawealthy and merely well-off alike in opposition once thousands of legitimate primary residences got needlessly swept into DOF’s notices. That confusion is now the subject of Mastro’s active lawsuit.