Mayor Zohran Mamdani has been hit with a barrage of negative headlines about the rollout of the state's new pied-à-terre tax. Homeowners are expressing "anger and confusion" over "Mamdani's pied-à-terrible mess," and the fact that his administration would "fire a warning shot" at "die-hard New Yorkers."
The trouble began after the City's Department of Finance published a searchable list of nearly all residential property values. This action itself wasn't new—every municipality in the state is required to publish property tax rolls every year. The DOF's sin was to publish it as a "supplement" to information regarding the new tax.
Then, the DOF sent out 17,000 letters to owners who hold certain kinds of property (one-, two-, and three-family homes valued at $5 million or more and condos/coops valued at $1 million or more) and asked them to confirm by the end of next month whether they were full-time New York City residents. If they can prove that they are full-time New Yorkers by providing their tax returns, or a driver's license and a voter registration card, they don't owe the tax. If they can't, they have to pay up.
For certain homeowners, the combination of these two actions amounted to the beginning of "The Purge."