A Staten Island judge on Tuesday dealt a major blow to Communist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani and ordered New York City to scrap the rollout of the new pied-à-terre tax, which hits New Yorkers who own a valuable second home.
Over the summer, Mamdani implemented a so-called luxury property tax on second homes valued at $5 million or more. The property tax also affected certain co-ops valued over $1 million.
Mamdani doxxed the homeowners after his Department of Finance published a database listing the names and addresses of the 960,000 properties.
“As per State law, a property roll was released for public inspection. From this list, DOF will identify properties that may be subject to the new non-primary residence property surcharge,” a Mamdani spox previously told Fox News.
Affluent homeowners said the database and doxxing could lead to harassment and violence.
Homeowners previously filed a lawsuit in New York’s Supreme Court to stop Mamdani’s property tax.
The lawsuit argues that New York City bungled the execution of the new tax by “arbitrarily and capriciously” forcing hundreds of thousands of residents to prove they do not owe the tax.
Last month Staten Island Supreme Court Judge Wayne Ozzi temporarily blocked Mamdani’s property tax as the lawsuit makes it way through the legal system.
New York City appealed and halted the judge’s restraining order.
On Tuesday, Judge Ozzi ordered NYC to scrap the rollout of the tax.
The city is expected to seek a stay of the judge’s decision, The New York Times reported.
The New York Times reported:
A Staten Island judge on Tuesday dealt a major setback to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s push to raise taxes on the wealthy, saying that the city had mishandled the rollout of a tax on high-end second homes and must start over.
The judge, Wayne M. Ozzi of State Supreme Court on Staten Island, sided with a group of homeowners who had sued the city. The homeowners had argued that the Mamdani administration did not try hard enough to determine who should owe the tax before moving toward collecting it.
“Homeowners are being substantially harmed and penalized needlessly” by the city’s “method of implementing the tax law,” Justice Ozzi wrote.
The lawsuit did not challenge the legality of the tax on second homes, also known as pieds-à-terre. Unveiled by Gov. Kathy Hochul in the spring and backed by the mayor, the tax was popular among voters and hailed by Mr. Mamdani’s supporters as a way to make good on his pledge to “tax the rich.” It was expected to close a budget gap by raising some $500 million annually to fund city services.
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