City shockingly lax on propprop-tax break

A year after being notified that 1,509 properties were improperly collecting tax breaks, the city’s Finance Department is still allowing more than half of them keep their benefits, Comptroller Scott Stringer revealed Wednesday.

Stringer (pictured) released a second audit of the state’s STAR and ESTAR property-tax exemption programs — both of which are administered by the department — that found 815 ineligible properties cited a year earlier were still pulling in $713,454 through “improper tax breaks” over two years.

STAR stands for School Tax Relief and ESTAR re- fers to Enhanced School Tax Relief.

Homeowners are eligible for both tax breaks on primary residences, but corporations and shell companies — like the ones Stringer singled out, first in 2015 and again this year — are not.

“One audit should have been enough for the Department of Finance to end the practice of giving away tax exemptions to ineligible corporations,” Stringer said. “The city must redouble its efforts to ensure these tax breaks only go to those who deserve them.”

In 2015, Stringer found that the department failed to reclassify at least 1,355 properties when ownerships were transferred to a corporation or limited-liability company.

In another 154, cases, the comptroller said, properties not classified for resi- dential use received STAR and ESTAR exemptions.

In the first round, Stringer determined that the city lost $422,520.

After the first audit was released, the department agreed to its recommendations, saying it was already “undertaking the steps recommended to ensure renewals are being completed and case files are being maintained.”

It pointed out that there were 562,474 properties receiving STAR tax breaks at the time.

In response to the follow-up report, the agency said its review determined that not all of Stringer’s data were correct.

“The comptroller’s review is based on an analysis of ACRIS and RPAD [databases]. When we did our own review of EIN and Social Security numbers, however, we found that some of these properties may indeed be eligible for STAR,” the department said in a statement.

“To reduce the probability of revoking the exemption from eligible households, we are doing additional research.

“Further to that, we will attempt to recoup any revenue lost from ineligible households, so the timing of the revocation will not have any revenue impact for the city.”