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Monday, November 18, 2019

Property taxes in New York: 5 new findings you should know

New Yorkers pay among the highest property taxes in the nation, but there is some good news: The annual increases have significantly slowed.
report from the state Comptroller’s Office last week showed the average growth in property taxes in New York rose on average 4.2% between 2005 and 2012.
Yet since then, the average increase has been 1.7% — the result of the state’s property cap enacted in 2011 that limits growth to no more than 2% a year. The cap was made permanent this year.
”Overall, municipalities have generally held property tax levy growth to below 2% for the last few years,” Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said.
The rate rose slightly more than 2% this year: up 2.4% compared to 2018, making it the largest increase in five years.
Here are some other new details about New York property taxes.

How much did New Yorkers pay?

Local governments levied $36.6 billion in property taxes in 2019 – an increase of 2.4% over 2018, DiNapoli said.
“Taxpayers want to know how their taxes compare to other municipalities and whether their local officials are holding the line on tax increases,” DiNapoli said.
New York has long held the distinction of having downstate counties paying the highest property taxes in America, including in Westchester and Rockland.
Meanwhile, parts of upstate pay the highest taxes compared to home values, including the Binghamton, Syracuse and Rochester metro areas.

How many taxing entities are there in New York?

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has often used the figure of 10,000, because he includes taxing districts for lights, sewer and water services.
DiNapoli sticks with the more widely used figure: 3,700 taxing jurisdictions with independent authority to levy property taxes
Those are counties, cities, towns, villages, school districts, fire districts and other special districts.
Property tax collections accounted for 43% of local governments’ revenues in 2018. The rest is mainly other government aid, along with fees or fines they collect.

Who increased taxes the most?

Of all the property taxes collected in New York, it turned out that cities had the largest increase in recent years.
From 2017 to 2019, property taxes increased in cities by 6.1%; towns at 4.4% and school districts at 4%. Village levies grew 1.7%.
School districts generally imposed the highest tax rates at $17.46 per $1,000 of full property value, while city tax rates were twice as high as those in villages and nearly three times higher than those in towns, DiNapoli said.

Which tax makes up the most of your bill?

It is by far school districts.
School taxes accounted for near $23 billion of the total taxes levied in 2019, or 63% of the total.
Counties accounted for nearly $6 billion, or 16% of all property taxes.

Which NY counties had the biggest boost in property values?

Four counties outside New York City — Erie, Oswego, Columbia and Nassau — all had property values grow by more than 10% in the past two years, DiNapoli said.
Long Island was the region outside the city with the largest property value growth at nearly 11% over the past two years, followed by 9.4% western New York.
In the Hudson Valley, the property values increased 5.7% over the same period

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