A Better Way to Tax Property

Philip Finkelstein

[A transcript of a broadcast made over WQXR Radio, 27 and 28 October, 1981]

The property tax in New York State in one of the worst in the country. It is fundamentally unfair because assessments are haphazard. Similar properties even in the same jurisdiction can pay widely different taxes. Some properties are assessed regularly and often, while other are assessed only when built, fixed or sold. Where values have gone up and assessments have not kept pace, local governments have raised rates to raise revenue. In areas, such as in the Bronx where values have gone down, unfair assessments contribute to abandonment. Bad assessments are bad both for the taxpayer and the community.

Five years ago, following a series of lawsuits, the courts declared this crazyquilt illegal. After years of studies, reports, and commissions documenting this non-system, the Legislature now wants to make it the law. The reason the Legislature has been so anxious to ratify the status quo is that a number of homeowners, particularly in Brooklyn and Queens, happen to enjoy very low tax burdens. The reason they do is that New York City is blessed with an enormous base of commercial property which bears the lion's share of the burden of taxation in New York. Of the city's $40 billion in taxable assessed property, half is on the commercial property in Manhattan.

With this base, the city usually doesn't bother one-family homes. Whatever value was placed on it when it was built in the 30's or 40's or even earlier is probably the same today. Of course, if it's a more modern home or if it's been fixed up recently, and the city was informed about that, chances are a newer and much higher assessment is on the books, so not all homeowners benefit from the current chaos. But tenants are taxpayers too. Apartment houses, tenements and walk-ups are assessed at much closer to full value than the one- or two-family house, and tenants cannot deduct the tax portion of rent from income tax! And outside of the city, in Nassau, Westchester, Suffolk and Rockland, homeowners are paying higher taxes than in the city and among the highest in the country.

There are better ways to protect the homeowner, and still correct the fundamental inequities.

Homeowners frightened at losing their low assessments have persuaded the Legislature to leave the property tax mess pretty much where it is. But there are much better ways to protect both this minority of homeowners and the majority of taxpayers and their local governments from unfair, irrational and too burdensome taxation.

The Center for Local Tax Research has examined the impact of a number of property tax alternatives in the school districts of Nassau County, among the highest taxed local jurisdictions in the world. We expect the results would apply more or less throughout the state. All of them demand honest, objective assessment on a single standard of value, a fundamental basis of fairness, legal, equitable and constitutional. And all of them provide a measure of relief for taxpayers, including homeowners, who now pay more than their neighbors.

With all property assessed at its full value, homeowners could be exempted up to the cost of an increase, or whatever percentage the local government wishes to forgive. Certainly the homeowner should be exempted from taxes on the value of improvements he makes to his own property.

Why should we penalize the owner who invests in his property and reward the one who allows his to deteriorate? A homestead exemption of improvements would go a long way to make sense of the tax system and give the good homeowner a break.

Another option would be to assess the full value of land only, maintaining the current assessment on improvements. This provides incentives to improve and invest, with an advantage of easy implementation. Land values could be assessed far more cheaply, quickly and accurately without assessors having to physically inspect every property, a task both resented and neglected. Under this policy both homeowners and small commercial properties generally would pay less than now.

. Finally, there is the option of assessing and taxing land only. Homeowners benefit most from a property tax on land because most of their property value is in their house. Pittsburgh, which now taxes land at five times the rate it does improvements, has done very well with this form of incentive taxation.

Property tax reform alone will not save our state, its cities and suburbs. But legalizing the current mess can do no good for our communities, or the vast majority of taxpayers.