After the New York State Legislature approved her Taxpayer Protection Plan, Nassau County Executive Laura Curran is urging the County Legislature to call this crucial legislation for a vote. According to Curran, the Taxpayer Protection Plan is a property tax exemption that will effectively spread out changes in class one property taxes due to the County’s long overdue reassessment over a five-year period. This phase-in plan is part of Curran’s three-step approach to provide property tax relief for homeowners. The approach has included:
- Restoring fairness and accuracy to what Curran calls “an unfair and corrupted assessment system that had been broken for nearly a decade”;
- Lowering taxes for overassessed property owners while still preserving everyone’s rights to grieve their property assessments; and
- Easing the tax burdens of this process by fighting to pass the Taxpayer Protection Plan that phases in changes from the broken system.
“I hear it all the time, taxes are way too high,” said County Executive Laura Curran. “We owe our taxpayers relief and protection while we restore accuracy and fairness to the property assessment system.”
To provide transparency for taxpayers as County Executive Laura Curran continues the significant progress made to fix the prior Administration’s corrupted property assessment system, the Department of Assessment has prepared new Taxpayer Protection Plan statements for every class one residential property owner.
Curran said that the updated statements, available on mynassauproperty.com, will demonstrate how the Taxpayer Protection Plan will hypothetically impact property taxes for the 2020-2021 tax year, and protect residents from immediate and full increases in taxes. Although the plan has been authorized by the State, it must be passed by the County Legislature.
The estimates included in the updated Taxpayer Protection Plan statements are based on the latest and most accurate information possible, including County, town, special district and school district levies for the most recently completed tax year of 2019-2020. The estimates in the statements also include the following factors.
- eligibility for tax exemptions including Senior Citizen, STAR, Enhanced STAR and Veterans;
- successful grievances with the Assessment Review Commission; and
- the impact of the County Executive’s Taxpayer Protection Plan.
The County’s phase-in plan has been modeled off similar successful plans in municipalities across New York State, including the Town of Greenburgh in Westchester.
In addition, commercial property owners already have a five-year phase-in of assessment increases. Nassau’s class one residential property owners would receive the same protection for 2020-21 increases with the passage of the Taxpayer Protection Plan.
