Let's do the receipt, because nobody else will.
On Wednesday, a New York appeals court threw out a lawsuit over the rollout of Mayor Zohran Mamdani's pied-à-terre tax, the surcharge on second homes worth $5 million or more. The four-judge panel was unanimous. The homeowners, the court said, hadn't shown they were actually harmed.
Here's the part that should be on a plaque in the Department of Finance lobby. Of the seven homeowners who sued, two never said they got a tax notice at all. The other five were exempted after they filed. So the city won a case brought by seven people, and not one of them has been shown to owe the tax. That's not a legal victory. That's a restaurant winning a lawsuit over a bill it handed to the wrong table.
Now the rollout math. The city published a supplemental roll of about 900,000 properties. Then it mailed roughly 17,000 notices to owners who might owe the surcharge. Since then, the Finance Department has granted more than 8,800 exemption requests. More than half the notices, gone. If a restaurant got more than half its orders wrong, the health inspector would show up. In New York, it gets an appeals win.
The court's explanation was a masterpiece. The notice, the judges wrote, "serves an informational purpose," like a debt collection letter. And the state legislature "must have anticipated that the list of notice recipients would not be exact or flawless." Translation: the system was designed to be wrong, so being wrong is fine. Somewhere, every parent who has ever said "you should have known better" is filing an appeal.
Next line on the receipt: the money. Mamdani says the tax will raise $500 million a year. The city's own comptroller, Mark Levine, estimated earlier this year it could raise up to $380 million from about 11,200 properties. That's a $120 million gap between the mayor and his own city's bookkeeper. In my house, a $120 million gap is called "the grocery budget after one trip to Whole Foods."
Do the division and Levine's top number works out to about $33,900 per property. The mayor's number needs the same rich people to cough up roughly $44,600 each, or needs about 3,500 more rich people to appear out of a co-op board meeting. Good luck. Rich people are the one group in New York that knows exactly where the exits are.
Mamdani's statement said the court "rejected an attempt by the ultrawealthy to avoid paying their fair share," and that "owning a second home worth over $5 million should come with a responsibility to the city that makes it valuable." Fine. Then the city should have the responsibility of mailing the bill to the right address.
And this isn't over. The tax still faces other lawsuits arguing it breaks the state and U.S. constitutions, including the claim that it only hits people who live outside New York. Opponents say the "ultimate day of reckoning" comes next month.
Meanwhile, Mamdani told BlazeTV, "It is not enough for Democrats to win power. We have to use that power." He's using it, all right. On 17,000 envelopes.
Total due: $500 million promised, $380 million estimated, 8,800 exemptions issued, zero plaintiffs shown to owe a dime. Please tip your accountant. He's the only one in this story who checked the math.
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The Demorat is a satire publication. This article is parody and commentary based on real news reports; jokes, exaggerations and fictional elements are not factual claims. Quotes attributed to real people are drawn from published reporting.
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