Chair Brewer opens oversight hearing on pied-à-terre tax rollout
Chair Gale Brewer introduces the hearing on the pied-à-terre tax implementation, noting the confusion around the city's rollout and the Department of Finance publishing a list of 900,000 properties potentially subject to the tax, far exceeding estimates of 14,000.
Thank you very much.
I am Gail Brewer, the chair of the Committee on Governmental Operations, State and Local, State and Federal Legislation.
I want to thank all the members of the public who have joined us today, as well as colleagues, the indomitable, fabulous chair of finance,
the Linda Lee, Council Member Jay Sanchez, Hanks Wong, Narcis Carmarano, and I think on Zoom we have Palladino.
Today, it's a very strange sort of hearing, but we will conduct oversight of the rollout of the pied-a-terre tax.
The most recent state budget included a surcharge on property that does not serve as a primary residence, but is more commonly referred to as a pied-à-terre.
There has been a lot of confusion around the city's rollout of the pied-à-terre tax.
First, the Department of Finance published on its website a list of around 900,000 residents that it said could potentially be subject to the tax.
Even though the controller estimated in June that less than 14,000 properties would be subject to the tax.
No estimate of the number of peditaires in the city comes even close to 900,000.
Yet the city still published the list