GOPs Bruce Blakeman vows to axe new pied-a-terre tax as NYC plans to hire 24 people as part of chaotic rollout

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman vowed to undo Gov.Kathy Hochul’s “oppressive” and “reckless” pied-à-terre tax if elected – as it was revealed the Big Apple plans to hire dozens of employees just to process the new fee.Blakeman, who’s currently serving as the elected Nassau County executive, issued a dire warning Thursday saying state Democratic Party policies will drive more New Yorkers out of the city, which already carries a 12.5% local tax burden, the third highest in the country.“This reckless tax will drive even more families, jobs, and investment out of our state, and middle-class New Yorkers will pay the price,” Blakeman said.

“I will move to eliminate it on day one when I am elected governor.”Blakeman also called out his opponent Hochul, who pushed the new tax through the state legislature as a lifeline to Big Apple Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who ran on a democratic socialist platform to tax the rich.Although Hochul resisted calls to hike income taxes and corporate taxes to appease the fledgling mayor and his comrades, she offered Mamdani several bailouts to help him balance his first budget including the pied-a-terre tax — which puts a charge on expensive second homes in the city.Blakeman blasted Hochul for allowing the Department of Finance to publish a list of all the Big Apple’s unoccupied non-primary residences worth more than $ 1 million — which included the names and addresses of the property owners.“Kathy Hochul and Zohran Mamdani’s new tax publicly targets homeowners, puts them at risk of crime, assumes they’re guilty, and forces them to prove they don’t owe the government more money,” Blakeman said.The comments come amid a chaotic rollout of the new home tax, which included unanswered questions about how the city determined who might have to pay the fee.A number of longtime New Yorkers claimed they wrongly received notices of the new tax despite living full-time in the city.

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