02/14/2022 Assessment Community Weekly
Shouldn’t Superbowl Monday be a holiday? Hope your team won and you enjoyed the fanfare (or at least the commercials)!
Reminder: Update your existing IVP entries
We don’t say it enough, but thank you for all that you do on behalf of homeowners’ STAR benefits in your communities. One of those many tasks is to keep the IVP Tool updated if any of the following occur for properties receiving the Enhanced STAR exemption:
- new or removed owners
- death of an owner
- all owners have moved, but they still own the property
In addition, you should close IVP enrollments where any of the following have occurred:
- all of the Enhanced STAR recipients are deceased
- the property has sold
- the IVP enrollment was created in error
For complete instructions, see the IVP Tool User Guide.
The sooner you make these changes, the more likely it will be that your STAR reports will reflect them.
2022 Tentative Special Franchise Values and Telecommunication Ceilings
We have sent the following:
- 2022 tentative telecom ceilings to all impacted munis and
- 2022 tentative special franchise values to all munis outside of New York City
We are using email to send the values and ceilings except to assessors who previously opted out of electronic communication.
Q. Can ORPTS tell me which school district my special franchise property is in?
A. Special franchise is reported only at a SWIS level. We do provide school district apportionments that are based on the percentage a school district that is in the SWIS. You can contact the company directly to identify more precisely which school districts are impacted in your municipality. For more information, see the Apportionment section of the Procedures For Utility Company Assessment Roll Standardization (UCARS).
Q. What is the parcel identification number of my special franchise property?
A. The property in question is mass property, and mass property is treated as having no specific physical location for assessment purposes. The assessor may assign one or more parcel ID numbers for the special franchise property of each company as they see fit. The Tax Department has no role in the assignment of parcel ID numbers. For more information, see Section, Block, Lot format (Part III of the UCARS procedures noted above).
Help us ensure that seniors don’t miss the Enhanced STAR exemption deadline
On January 24, we told you about our mailing to seniors who may be eligible for the Enhanced STAR exemption.
Last week, the Tax Department issued a press release with the same message.
For the STAR credit, we can identify and upgrade eligible seniors ourselves, but when it comes to the exemption, we will take all the help we can get. If you know of Basic STAR exemption recipients who may be eligible for Enhanced STAR this year, we encourage you to consider doing your own outreach to them.
We hope that our combined efforts will result in fewer good cause cases this year. Every little bit of outreach will help!
Isn’t it too early to think about STAR credit checks?
Not for us – or for the homeowners who start calling us in the spring to ask when the checks will be issued! If you know of a homeowner who is wondering when they’ll get their STAR credit check in the mail, tell them our STAR Credit Delivery Schedule Tool is updated for 2022. (Rule of thumb: The checks will be issued before school taxes are due.)
Can you electronically prepare your federal and state income taxes for free?
Did you know that most New Yorkers can prepare and file their income taxes using Free File software, which is available at no-cost on the Tax Department website? If your 2021 household income is $73,000 or less, you can file both your federal and New York State returns at no cost through the Tax Department website using Free File. Nearly 255,000 taxpayers used the software last year, saving them a combined $51 million in tax preparation fees.
Judicial cases
New Judicial cases:
- Matter of 314 Rutledge St., LLC v Tax Commn. of the City of N.Y.
- Matter of Montpay Realty Corp. v Laveman
- 129 MacDougal St. Assoc. Inc. v Tax Commn. of the City of New York
