Pre-Paying RE taxes
Just got my RE tax bill and they offer the option of paying for the whole year. Is there any advantage to this at all, rather than just paying the quarterly amount?
Just got my RE tax bill and they offer the option of paying for the whole year.
Is there any advantage to this at all, rather than just paying the quarterly amount?
“The tax in 2008 was 18K. Now it is 22K.” – on a rental brownstone?what does that mean….how big, how many apts, what rentroll?
Even if market value slips, since most props are not taxed at close to full value because of limits on yearly increases, will never see taxes fall.
You can always donate money to the public schools if you want. Or forgo the rebate – it was only 500 bucks. It doesn’t seem so weird that the city failed to envision someone who is outraged that he has to accept both rebates.
As for the condo versus coop versus private house tax rates, this is nothing new. The tax system is tilted in favor of single (3 and down) home-owners. Coops are taxed as commercial properties, and condos are taxed close to their actual value while the valuations on single homes only rise quite slowly.
Here’s another pet peeve of mine. Back when the city was handing out property tax rebates, I didn’t receive one, so I contacted the NYC Dept. of Finance to find out why. Turns out it was because their records didn’t show that this was my primary residence. Fine, so what did I have to do to document that? The answer was that I had to apply for STAR benefits (i.e., the School Tax Relief Program), for whic you only qualify if your property serves as your primary residence. I hadn’t applied because, even though my kids went to private school, I felt like I should still support the public schools with my taxes. Wasn’t there any other way I could document that my apartment is my primary residence? Through tax returns, mortgage documents, affidavits, etc.? I was told no, that the only way was to apply for STAR. So I did, and of course now I get a STAR reduction, AND I got rebates when they were handing them out. So the city basically forced me into opting out of paying the max to fund our failing public schools so that I could qualify for the rebates that everyone else was getting.
WHAT MADNESS IS THIS?!?
When I bought my apartment in 2002, the taxes were supposedly completely abated for another 14 years. Then they re-assessed and raised rates, and it keeps getting worse: it was about $5,000 when the taxes first kicked in, now it’s about $7,000. That’s not counting about $1,600 that is still abated. I talked to a lawyer when this first happened, and he advised against challenging it, as the risk was that the city could decide they had undervalued the property, with the result that my taxes could end up going even higher. Crazy!!!
Meanwhile, the building next door on one side (identical to ours, but it’s a 4-unit co-op rather than a 4-unit condo) pays $7,000 in taxes for the entire building. The building on the other side (also a 4-unit co-op) pays $4,675 for the entire building. (I just looked it up.) Granted, the finishes may be different in ours (more recently renovated), we’ve got central air, I’ve got a duplex with private access to the garden which the others don’t, but still … how does this kind of discrepancy make any sense?
It’s well-established that taxes are NOT based purely on square footage. Taxes and assessed values are constantly adjusted based not only on building size, but on occupancy, filed (or unfiled) renovations and upgrades, changes in CO, various abatement, exemption and tax reduction programs, etc. Some posters above are in Tax Class2A (4-6 unit residential buildings) with a current rate of 13.241%, based on estimated market value, billable assessed value, and income and expenses as reported by them in annual RPIE. Not arguing whether good or bad, just sayin’…
It kills me to see the different RE taxes being paid by my neighbors for pretty much identically sized homes. The house across the street is actually much bigger and grander, but they’re accessed less than 3/4 of what we pay. Some similarly-sized but schlumpy apartment buildings across the avenue pay less than 1/3 of what we pay. Meanwhile, we can’t do all the improvements to our place that we would like because we have to pay all our extra money out in RE tax.
starfish, they did raise rates plus re-assessing at higher values eventhough market theoretically tanks. Double whammy.
park sloper, that’s pretty damn high taxes, what can I say.
Just got my annual NYC property tax bill. It is 20% higher then it was in 2008! I’m comparing it to 2008 because that’s when property values were still high. They have crashed since then. I would expect the property tax to reflect that.
I own a rental brownstone in the north Slope. The tax in 2008 was 18K. Now it is 22K.
I just don’t get it. Have they been raising the rates to compensate for the lower property value? If so they must be raising the rates sharply because the tax in $ is not only the same as it was but substantially higher.
My savings is something like $75. My annual real estate taxes on my brownstone condo are over $7,000. Much higher than some folks were complaining about on the OT.