Everyday New Yorkers going through hell to prove their homes arent pieds--terre even brokers say none of it makes sense

Under New York’s new pied-à-terre tax, homeowners are guilty until proven innocent.Karen Young spent three hours just trying to begin the process of proving her Upper West Side brownstone — her home of 30 years — is her primary residence to avoid the new pied-à-terre surcharge.In the end, it was a complete waste of time.“I was planning to upload a few more documents yesterday morning, only to discover the documents I uploaded Monday weren’t saved despite the requirement to set up an account with a password,” Young, president and founder of beauty marketing company the Young Group, told The Post.She also needs to get ownership title/deed for her brownstone from her estate lawyer, whom she has to pay, to continue with the process.“So I have to start from scratch,” she added.

“I will wait till all the documents are assembled. There are a lot of them.”Young has until Aug.21 to submit all her documents or else she will be on the hook for a $42,824 surcharge courtesy of New York City’s new annual “Surcharge on Property That Does Not Serve as a Primary Residence,” and levied by the city’s Department of Finance on her Jan.

1, 2027 property tax bill.“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 previously told The Post.When homeowners get a notice in the mail claiming they owe the tax, the onus is on them to prove the city got it wrong. The tax — which was framed as a tax on wealthy second-home owners — has caused a whole bunch of confusion.

In particular, homeowners were overwhelmed when Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration published a searchable database of more than 960,000 residences and owners that could fall under the new pied-à-terre tax. “We opposed this tax in part because we warned that determining who is and is not subject to it would be extraordinarily complicated,” said James Whelan, president ...