Property Tax Breaks Denied For Business Affected By WTC Attacks

by Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.com, New York

03 October 2001

New York City administrators have announced that the owners of buildings destroyed or damaged in the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center will not receive any special property tax consideration from the city.

'We have buildings demolished by fires all the time, and we do not give them a break,' one official told the New York Post. For the moment at least, it has been decided that the payment of property taxes should be covered by fire and business interruption insurance.

For the purposes of property tax billing the city considers a building's condition as of January 5th each year, so taxes for damaged or destroyed buildings will still be owed for the full fiscal year that began on July 1st, and non-payment will result in the imposition of a punitive 18% interest rate.

This inflexibility seems to make little sense, given that the New York authorities are currently trying to put together a package of benefits to make Lower Manhattan attractive to tenants again in the wake of the crisis: 'If it makes sense, then it would include real estate taxes,' observed the President of the Real Estate Board of New York, Steven Spinola, last week.

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