11/09/2020 Assessment Community Weekly

With Veterans Day approaching, we honor and extend our sincere gratitude to those who fought for our country. Thank you.

Downtime next Monday

The STAR IVP Tool and the STAR reports will be down Monday, November 16, for a technology update. We expect the tools to be back up in the afternoon. We’ll provide a status report in that day’s edition of Assessment Community Weekly.

NYS Tax Return Deceased Report (Report #10)

The updated NYS Tax Return Deceased Report is now available to county directors in the Online Assessment Community. As you’ll recall from last year, while by law the report is only available to county directors, the law also authorizes them to share the report with assessors, tax receivers, and county treasurers.

The report lists property owners who:

• are receiving or registered for a STAR benefit, and
• were reported as deceased on a recent New York State income tax return.

The report is for your information; you are not required to take action based on it. If you choose to use it, before making any changes based on the report, you may wish to cross reference it against local information on the Internet or other sources.

If you come across a property owner who is erroneously listed in the report (that is, they’re not deceased), it is likely due to information mistakenly reported on an income tax return. You can notify us at real.property@tax.ny.gov, and we will update the report when it is next published in the fall of 2021.

New quiz

Note: Thank you to Dan Martonis, the County RPT Director from the Land of Bad Smelling Banks (Cattaraugus County), for this week’s quiz topic. If you have a suggestion for a future quiz, email geoffrey.gloak@tax.ny.gov. We (probably) won’t give you a hard time.

Dan wrote: “I just received the yearly email telling me what my county’s equalization rate is. I’ve never known why I need this. What’s it used for? You have to come up with it by law, but why? Why do I get it?”

Great question, Dan! Here’s the quiz:

The state equalization rates that are determined for counties pursuant to RPTL §1214 are used to (select all that apply):

A) apportion county taxes;
B) apportion village taxes when a village crosses over a county line;
C) determine the county’s full value for aid purposes;
D) all of the above; or
E) none of the above.

Look for the answer next week!

New judicial case

We’ve added Matter of 655 Fifth Dutch Equities, LLC v Tax Commn. of the City of N.Y. to Judicial cases.