{"id":360682,"date":"2026-09-30T11:10:34","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T11:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/360682\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T11:10:34","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T11:10:34","slug":"new-yorkers-battling-mamdanis-pied-a-terre-tax-snag-big-legal-win-as-casino-mogul-steve-wynn-joins-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/360682\/","title":{"rendered":"New Yorkers battling Mamdani’s pied-a-terre tax snag big legal win — as casino mogul Steve Wynn joins fight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s administration was dealt a blow Tuesday as a judge ruled the city must scrap its bungled rollout of the new pied-\u00e0-terre tax<\/a> and start anew.<\/p>\n

The decision by Staten Island Supreme Court Justice Wayne Ozzi is a major setback<\/a> for one of the mayor\u2019s signature policies \u2013 and comes as casino mogul Steve Wynn and former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross joined the legal fight to halt the tax.<\/p>\n

Ozzi ruled the city was both \u201carbitrary\u201d and \u201ccapricious\u201d when it mailed notices to more than 1,000 New Yorkers who were not actually subject to the tax on luxury second homes in the Big Apple.<\/p>\n

Mamdani initiated a \u201cpied-\u00e0-terre tax\u201d targeting luxury, non-primary residence properties worth over $5 million in New York City. Instagram\/@nycmayor<\/p>\n

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, left, speaks with casino and hotel magnate Steve Wynn before a dinner with members of the board of the Kennedy Center hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump in the State Dining Room. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Homeowners who received the bogus notices were \u201csubstantially harmed and penalized needlessly\u201d by having the \u201cburden\u201d of proving to city officials that they should be exempt, the judge wrote.<\/p>\n

Ozzi found that all roughly 17,000 notices sent out must be \u201ccancelled,\u201d and the city Department of Finance must start from scratch and resend them individually.<\/p>\n

The tax, approved by Gov. Kathy Hochul<\/a> and the state Legislature, is meant to apply to 1-to-3 family homes worth at least $5 million and co-ops and condominiums valued at $1 million or more that are unoccupied, non-primary residences.<\/p>\n

Randy Mastro, who filed the suit<\/a> on behalf of Staten Island homeowners, hailed the decision \u2014 which the city will likely appeal \u2014 as a victory.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re gratified that the court has recognized we were right all along. The fact is that this administration failed to follow state law when it burdened New York City homeowners with proving they live in their own homes or be on the hook for paying a new surcharge,\u201d Mastro said.<\/p>\n

Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Wayne Ozzi, who will preside over the Robert Morales trial, Thursday, Aug. 2, 2012. Spencer Burnett<\/p>\n

\u201cNow the administration must go back and do what it should have done from the start: use all the information at its disposal to make an individualized \u2018initial determination\u2019 about who truly owes this surcharge before demanding that they pay it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Mamdani administration\u00a0said it planned to appeal the ruling.\u00a0The city has said that the tax<\/a> would raise more than $500 million a year to help fund schools, libraries and other essential public services.<\/p>\n

Mastro also filed a new lawsuit Tuesday in Suffolk County, challenging the law on behalf of a different group of homeowners and a Big Apple co-op corporation who argue the pied-\u00e0-terre tax violates the state constitution.<\/p>\n

Wynn and Ross, whose main residences are in Palm Beach, Florida, separately filed suit, also in Suffolk County, on Monday, claiming that the tax was \u201cunconstitutional.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wynn received notice in July that he was due to pay a $183,000 surcharge on his Manhattan property, the state suit claims.<\/p>\n

Ross said in court papers that he\u00a0received a similar notice that he was due to pay $83,000 under the new policy.<\/p>\n

Hochul ripped the\u00a0two uberwealthy businessmen as hardly \u201csympathetic figures\u201d\u2013 echoing Mamdani\u2019s harsh words toward hedge funder Ken Griffin, whose $238 million penthouse Hizzoner posed outside of while announcing plans for the new tax <\/a>earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Steve Wynn and Wilbur Ross cast themselves as sympathetic figures over paying their fair share on multimillion-dollar second, third, fourth or fifth homes, they make the case for the pied-\u00e0-terre tax better than we ever could,\u201d Hochul wrote in a post on X Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Additional reporting by Matthew Fischetti<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s administration was dealt a blow Tuesday as a judge ruled the city must scrap its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[57,9,24,55,54,56,79763,2780,58,82],"class_list":["post-360682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-pied-a-terre","tag-taxes","tag-us-news","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360682","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=360682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}