The ruling Wednesday allows the administration to proceed with efforts to collect the annual surcharge, more than a month after a judge in Staten Island ruled that the city’s finance department had mishandled the rollout and violated plaintiffs’ due process rights in determining who would pay the tax.
The tax, first proposed by Mamdani and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul earlier this year and passed in the state budget, still faces other legal challenges. Mamdani campaigned in part on a promise to tax the rich — the new tax is on homes worth a certain amount owned by those who live outside the city most of the time — and the surcharge would also help with the city’s budget deficit.
The lawsuit ruled on Wednesday only concerns part of the rollout of the tax, not its legality. It still faces other legal challenges. This suit was brought by a group of city homeowners who had received notices from the finance department that they might be subject to the new tax. The plaintiffs said they were not given enough time to prove if they didn’t qualify for the tax.