NYC’s FY 2026 Property Tax Assessments Spark Legal Action
The Tentative Property Tax Assessments for Fiscal Year 2026 that were released by the New York City Department of Finance (DOF) on January 15th have prompted Tax Equity Now New York —a coalition that includes property owners, renters, and civil rights groups, to file a motion against the city. The group’s new motion “argued that the current system violates the state’s real property tax law and federal housing law by overtaxing rental properties’ as part of a 2017 lawsuit that the Court of Appeals revived last year. For years, the city’s property tax system that dates back to 1981 “has been harshly criticized,” but despite results of a study released by a commission formed during the second term of the de Blasio administration and a proposal released in 2022 by New York City Comptroller Brad Lander that offered a framework to effect change, efforts to reform the current tax system have never moved forward. Due to officials using “rent-stabilized buildings as comparisons for luxury condos and co-ops, rental buildings are burdened with a disproportionate share of taxes.