NEW YORK (AP) — Across the U.S., calls to “tax the rich” have become potent political slogans. But even in Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s New York, getting the wealthy to pay more isn’t playing out as smoothly as supporters hoped.

What seemed at first like an easy idea — slapping a new tax on people who own luxury second homes in the Big Apple but live elsewhere most of the year — has instead created a lot of confusion in the city’s notoriously convoluted world of real estate arrangements.

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