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Testimony to the New York City Department of Finance
Public Hearing on Proposed Rules: Surcharge on Non-Primary Residences
July 9, 2026
To Whom it May Concern:
I am writing as a co-op shareholder to comment on the proposed rules related to the Pied-A-Terre Tax.
The core problem with this tax is that it was written for condominiums; a cooperative is not a condominium, and the rules must reflect that difference.
A cooperative building is a single tax lot. Shareholders do not own units. They own shares in a corporation that holds title to the entire building.
The proposed rules add the non-primary residence surcharge to the cooperative corporation's consolidated tax bill. The corporation is then expected to identify which shareholders triggered the liability and recover the money from them. This is a tax collection function.
A cooperative board's relationship with its shareholders is defined entirely by the proprietary lease. It can impose charges specifically enumerated in the lease document. It cannot create new categories of financial obligation. The Department has created a collection obligation and provided no collection mechanism.
Because the surcharge attaches as a lien on the cooperative building as a whole, every shareholder in the building is exposed to the consequences of one shareholder's failure to pay. This is not an edge case. It is a foreseeable structural consequence of billing the corporation rather than the individual, and the proposed rules do nothing to address it. Innocent shareholders must not bear the financial risk of one shareholder’s delinquency.
I recognize that the Department is working under significant time pressure but the co-op community is not asking for delay for its own sake. We are asking for rules that can actually be administered, by real people and institutions, without producing outcomes that no one intended and no one should want.
Respectfully submitted,
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