Exclusive | Longtime New Yorkers fume after being hit with massive pied--terre tax bills: Is this a witch hunt?
New Yorkers were seething Tuesday after Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration alerted them they’d be on the hook for the state’s new pied-à-terre tax — which was explicitly sold as a levy targeting wealthy owners of luxury second homes.Longtime residents — some who have called the Big Apple home for decades and own a single abode in the city — told The Post they were shocked to get hit with five-figure tax bills they believe were mistakenly mailed out, and are now being forced to navigate a bureaucratic labyrinth to prove it.“Whoever’s behind this, who I can only assume is the mayor, didn’t take the 30 seconds to research,” said Karen Young, president and founder of New York and Paris-based beauty marketing company The Young Group, who has lived in New York since 1972.She was stunned when she received a letter from the city Department of Finance asking for $43,000 in pied-à-terre tax on her West 95th Street brownstone, which she’s lived in with her husband for 30 years.“Is this a witch hunt?” she asked, exasperated.“I just sort of line up all of these things and think ‘why are you picking on us?’” Young said.“As a faithful New Yorker since 1972, I find it not only insulting but painful,” she fumed, “Is anybody paying any attention, or any thinking, or two minutes of research.Just look me up!”Young said she went to the DOF’s website to attempt to prove her permanent residency — but quickly hit a brick wall.“It’s a cumbersome process to prove that I’m a primary resident, which just seems absurd.
My jury summons come here, I pay my taxes from here, my utilities,” she said.Despite the department telling her the process to appeal or challenge the bill was as easy as uploading a driver’s license, Young said she was forced to pay her estate lawyer to get the proper documentation after spending three fruitless hours on the website trying to do it herself.“Apparently they haven’t checked their own website.And I�...