General

Many returns

The Tax Department processed 28.8 million returns in 2022, nearly half of which were personal income tax returns.

Tax credits

The Tax Department administers more than 80 different tax credits worth more than $4 billion annually.

Audits and enforcement

Cases closed

The Tax Department’s Audit Division performs diverse audit, compliance, and enforcement activities involving personal income tax, corporation tax, sales and transaction taxes, and more than 20 miscellaneous taxes. The number of cases closed increased by 52% in 2022.

Civil enforcement collections

Tax revenue collected by the Civil Enforcement Division (CED) has trended up, with the exception of 2021 when the Tax Department suspended active collections for most of the fiscal year because of COVID-19.

Installment payment agreements

Taxpayers who can’t pay their tax balance by the due date can request an installment payment agreement (IPA) online. An IPA enables qualifying taxpayers to make scheduled, monthly payments for up to 36 months. More taxpayers than ever took advantage of this service in 2022.

Cigarette inspections

The Tax Department’s Criminal Investigations Division conducted nearly 5,000 regulatory cigarette inspections since 2019. Almost 40% of inspected retailers were noncompliant, resulting in the seizure of more than 23,000 cartons of illegal cigarettes.

Increasing online services

More than 6.1 million state taxpayers now have Online Services accounts with the Tax Department. These filers can make payments, check their refund statuses, respond to department notices, and communicate directly with the department for many purposes.

Tax registration

The Tax Department registers thousands of vendors to sell taxable products and services every year.

Registered taxpayers by registration type

Tax registration type	Active taxpayers
Sales tax Certificate of Authority	558,895
Cigarette tax Certificate of Registration (only)—retailer	5,459
Vapor tax Certificate of Registration (only)—retailer (began November 2019)	426
Cigarette or tobacco and vapor taxes Certificate of Registration (both)—retailer	7,545
Highway use tax (HUT) and automotive fuel carrier (AFC)	121,422
International Fuel Tax Agreement (IFTA)	9,079
Petroleum business tax	1,523
Alcohol beverage tax	3,239
Tobacco distributors and wholesalers	325
Cigarette agents and wholesalers	163
Cigarette chain stores	1,101

Modernizing correspondence

The Tax Department is reducing mail correspondence, including offering 131 notices electronically and sending email reminders to taxpayers who do business electronically with the department.

More Web traffic

In 2022, www.tax.ny.gov had nearly 90 million pageviews, with a high of 1.2 million on April 18, 2022.

Language access

The Tax Department’s call center answers more than 1.9 million calls each year, many from taxpayers who speak languages other than English. The department contracts with a translation vendor to expand the call center’s ability to assist callers in many languages.