Second home owners discover a new line item, and considerably less patience for it
A tax on second homes meets a first class legal response
A group of New York City homeowners is suing to delay implementation of the new pied-a-terre tax, arguing the rollout was bungled, according to CBS New York’s coverage of the dispute. Owning a part-time apartment in Manhattan has apparently come with a new, deeply unwelcome full-time hobby, reading tax notices.
A tax that was always going to be unpopular somewhere
Taxing rarely-occupied luxury apartments was never going to generate universal sympathy in a city with a well documented housing crunch, though affected owners argue their complaint is about implementation details rather than the underlying policy itself, a distinction that rarely survives contact with a courtroom.
City officials defend the timeline
City Hall maintains the rollout followed standard procedure, while critics of the tax say notice periods and calculation methods left owners scrambling, a disagreement likely to play out over several court dates before anyone’s pied-a-terre gets any quieter.
Fazit
A tax on part-time homes has become a full-time legal matter. SOURCE: https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/tag/congestion-pricing/ For more British satire on a related theme, see The London Prat’s Dangerous-Driving Videos Removed.