Prop. tax squeezing poor NYers: Stringer

The city’s property-tax rate has grown at triple the rate of New Yorkers’ incomes over the past decade, making it tough for residents at the lower end of the economic scale to make ends meet, Comptroller Scott Stringer’s office said Wednesday.

Property taxes are eating up ever larger portions of homeowners’ income — particularly for households making less than $50,000 a year, Stringer’s office found.

That group saw its average property-tax burden nearly double between 2005 and 2016, growing from 6.6 percent to 12.7 percent of income.

“Property taxes are rising too fast and incomes are rising too slow — and it’s becoming harder than ever for already struggling New Yorkers to get ahead,” said Stringer.

In 2005, homeowners making less than $50,000 paid an average property tax of $1,940. By 2016, they were shelling out $3,849 — while median salaries for the group stayed relatively flat at just under $33,000 per year.

Higher-earning families also had nothing to cheer about.

Those making between $50,000 and $100,000 annually devoted 3.4 percent of their earnings to property taxes in 2005 and 5.4 percent by 2016.

The tax burden on households in the $100,000- to $250,000-a-year bracket had less to complain about, with the portion of their paychecks that went to property taxes rising from 2.4 percent to 3.7 percent.

Comptroller officials said they conducted the analysis to get the problematic issue on the radar of the city’s property-tax reform commission — which met for the first time this week.

The advisory board has not given a timeline for releasing its proposals to reform a system that’s been ripped as unfair by wide swaths of homeowners for decades. Nearly all changes to the system would require action in Albany.

Stringer’s office said the board should consider proposing changes to existing property-tax relief programs that target low earners, but don’t save them much money.

The comptroller found that for households earning less than $100,000, the STAR Property Exemption amounts to roughly $300 in savings, while the NYC Enhanced Property Tax Benefit saves just $52. By contrast, similar programs in Maryland and Washington, DC, that could serve as models for reform are as much as 20 times more generous, his office found.

The property tax is the city’s largest revenue source. It brought in $12.7 billion in 2005 — and grew to $24.1 billion by 2016.

The bills increase just about every year — even as the tax rate remains the same — because assessments keep going up.