{"id":334274,"date":"2026-08-31T23:18:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T23:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/334274\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T23:18:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T23:18:08","slug":"none-of-the-homeowners-suing-over-mamdanis-pied-a-terre-tax-are-subject-to-it-can-the-case-still-stand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/334274\/","title":{"rendered":"None of the homeowners suing over Mamdani\u2019s pied-\u00e0-terre tax are subject to it. Can the case still stand?"},"content":{"rendered":"

None of the homeowners suing<\/a> over the rollout of the city\u2019s pied-\u00e0-terre tax on New Yorkers\u2019 pricey second homes are actually subject to the tax, a fact that the city told the Staten Island Supreme Court judge hearing the case on Monday should lead to the suit\u2019s dismissal.<\/p>\n

Homeowners bringing the case argue that the city mailing out notices to 17,000 people who may owe the new tax unfairly placed the burden of determining who owes it on homeowners, as those letters asked property owners to send the city paperwork asking for an exemption if they believed they shouldn\u2019t have to pay. The property owners want the city to annul those letters, unpublish a database of nearly 1 million properties the city put online as part of the rollout and \u201credo\u201d the process after making a more specific determination about who exactly should owe the tax.<\/p>\n

However, all of the plaintiffs in the case who received one of those 17,000 letters have since received an additional mailing from the city saying that, upon the city government\u2019s acquisition of 2025 tax return information from the state, the city no longer believes those homeowners are on the hook for the tax. <\/p>\n

From the city\u2019s point of view, that means no one bringing the case has actually suffered any harm \u2014 and therefore their request that the court rule in their favor has no legal standing.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is about a case where nobody has a live claim,\u201d said Steven Banks, the head of the city\u2019s Law Department who argued the case Monday in court. \u201cThese petitioners have been found not subject to the surcharge, so they have no standing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prevailing legal precedent says people are not able to sue over something they aren\u2019t directly harmed by.\n<\/p>\n

Staten Island Supreme Court Judge Wayne Ozzi, who himself appears on the disputed list of 900,000 properties<\/a>, had ruled to temporarily pause<\/a> the tax\u2019s rollout on Aug. 10, agreeing with those bringing the suit that the city had placed an undue burden on homeowners and violated people\u2019s privacy, but that decision was effectively nullified by the city appealing that pause hours later.<\/p>\n

Ozzi said he would be making a final decision in the coming days on whether or not the city violated the law in its tax rollout process and needs to \u201credo\u201d it, adding that he was aware of the time-sensitive nature of the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, it\u2019s unclear how the request to \u201credo\u201d the tax rollout would look different from what the city\u2019s doing now as it sends out revised mailings narrowing the universe of people possibly on the hook for the surcharge, part of what the city called its \u201citerative process\u201d of determining who has to pay as it irons out the kinks of a new tax.<\/p>\n

Whittling down the pied-\u00e0-terre list<\/p>\n

Over the past few weeks, the city\u2019s determined that over 6,000 people \u2013 including those bringing the case \u2013 who received those initial notices won\u2019t have to pay the tax, a conclusion it came to after receiving 2025 tax return data from the state in August, months earlier than it typically receives it in February.<\/p>\n

The city has also since sent out additional notices to about 10,800 of the initial 17,000 people asking them to send the city information to determine whether they\u2019ll be on the hook for the tax. Those people either didn\u2019t pay New York City taxes in 2025 according to the state\u2019s tax return data, or the property in question is owned by an LLC or a trust, making it essentially impossible for the city to tell who exactly owns or lives in the property without additional information from the property owner.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of those people are actually before this court,\u201d Banks said. \u201cThat\u2019s why the relief that\u2019s being asked for should not be granted.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Those people now have until Oct. 6 to provide information to the city requesting an exemption to the tax. Banks added that, if Ozzi issues a ruling in favor of those bringing the suit, it could actually tie up the exemption application process for those who are actually still on the hook for the tax.<\/p>\n

Randy Mastro, the attorney representing the homeowners who previously served as a first deputy mayor in the Adams administration, said Monday in court that the city should have gone to greater lengths to determine who truly owes the tax before sending out those initial 17,000 mailings, arguing it put those New Yorkers \u201cthrough hell\u201d as they had to consult attorneys and accountants about what to do. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cLitigation like this seeks to hold the government accountable when it violates the law,\u201d said Mastro, who added that the Mamdani administration should have done its \u201chomework\u201d before sending out notices. \u201cThe city may not terrify first and clarify later, but that is exactly what is happening here.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mastro, who himself received one of those 17,000 letters, added that because homeowners received an initial \u201cthreatening\u201d notice \u2014 which he repeatedly referred to as \u201cnastygrams\u201d in court \u2014 and found themselves on the online tax roll database, the city\u2019s process created \u201cmass panic\u201d and therefore harmed them. He argued it also placed their privacy at risk via the online database of roughly 900,000 properties, a document the city says has essentially always been publicly available and they were required by state law to post.<\/p>\n

Banks countered that the city made the best initial determination it could by sending out letters to those 17,000 property owners as early as it could in July based on the information it had available at the time. The city did that to provide people as much time as possible to apply for an exemption if they thought they should get one and sent out updated mailings as it got more information.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s attorney added that it was ridiculous to argue that anyone was suffering actual legal harm from being on the database of 900,000 property owners, citing Ozzi\u2019s place in the database. He added that the information has essentially always been public and if it wasn\u2019t published in connection to the rollout people might sue over that as well, adding unnecessary legal drama to the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no cognizable legal harm. If there was cognizable legal harm we wouldn\u2019t even be able to have this case in this courtroom,\u201d Banks said, referring to the potential conflict of interest that could arise if Ozzi essentially ruled he was harmed by his own place on the list. \u201cNobody has cognizable legal harm. The case should be dismissed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Critically, those suing aren\u2019t challenging the tax itself, simply the rollout, meaning the most the suit could do would be to delay its implementation \u2013 and the city\u2019s ability to collect the roughly $500 million it expects the tax to bring in \u2013 by forcing the city to put its rollout on hold, nix the progress its made and \u201credo\u201d the process.<\/p>\n

The tax applies to second homes when they\u2019re condos valued at at least $1 million or single-family homes valued at at least $5 million. The tax progressively increases as the value of the home increases, topping out at 1.3% of a single-family home\u2019s value when it\u2019s worth over $25 million and 6.5% of a condo or co-op\u2019s value when it\u2019s worth over $5 million. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"None of the homeowners suing over the rollout of the city\u2019s pied-\u00e0-terre tax on New Yorkers\u2019 pricey second…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,2710,9,24,63,79763,5326,42256,82],"class_list":["post-334274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-law","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-pied-a-terre","tag-randy-mastro","tag-steven-banks","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}