New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani marked Tax Day by making good on one of his most prominent campaign promises, and he did it while outside hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin\u2019s front door.<\/p>\n
In a video posted on Tuesday by the\u00a0NYC Mayor\u2019s Office<\/a>, Mamdani announced the city\u2019s first-ever pied-\u00e0-terre tax: an annual fee on luxury properties valued above $5 million whose owners do not live in New York full-time. The video, which has already drawn nearly 470,000 views and 48,000 likes, was shot outside 220 Central Park South, the building where Citadel CEO Ken Griffin<\/a> owns a four-floor penthouse he purchased in 2019 for $238 million, then the highest price ever paid for a home in the United States.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich,\u201d Mamdani said in the one-minute clip. \u201cWell, today we\u2019re taxing the rich.\u201d<\/p>\n The proposal, which is backed by Gov. Kathy Hochul and still requires approval from the state legislature, would apply to one-to-three-family homes, condominiums, and co-ops worth over $5 million when the owner\u2019s primary residence is outside New York City. Mamdani\u2019s office estimates the tax would generate at least $500 million annually, with revenue directed toward free childcare, street cleaning, and neighborhood safety.<\/p>\n Griffin relocated Citadel\u2019s headquarters from Chicago to Miami in 2022, drawn by Florida\u2019s lack of a personal income tax. He shares the move with Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Google<\/a> co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, all of whom recently left high-tax states<\/a> and now maintain Florida residences.<\/a> Griffin also recently paid $38 million for a duplex apartment up the block from where Mamdani shot the video, according to the Wall Street Journal.<\/a><\/p>\n Mamdani said the tax would fix \u201ca fundamentally unfair system.\u201d \u201cThese units are sitting empty,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd even so, they\u2019re able to reap the huge financial rewards of owning property in, dare I say, the greatest city in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n