(MINEOLA, N.Y.) - Nassau County Legislature Minority Leader Kevan M. Abrahams (D - Freeport) and the members of the Minority Caucus joined with concerned Nassau homeowners on Wednesday, Oct. 12 to announce the discovery of substantial errors in hundreds of Nassau County school tax bills - errors that in least one case caused a homeowner’s first-half school tax bill to soar by 62 percent.
Following the release of first-half school tax bills, Nassau County property owners began reaching out to the Minority Caucus, shocked to discover they purportedly owed significantly more than what they had anticipated based upon previous tax bills and the value of their respective homes.
Patterns in tax bills that were provided to the Minority Caucus by aggrieved homeowners indicate these errors were most likely caused by the misapplication of the Taxpayer Protection Program (TPP) five-year phase-in - a program that was enacted by the Nassau County Legislature beginning in the 2020-21 tax year. Further analysis by tax representatives and experts who ran the numbers on the tax roll saw more than 800 reoccurrences of this error.
At this point in the phase-in, single-family residential property owners should be seeing a 40 percent exemption on the increase in equalized assessed value from the 2020-21 reassessment. However, an analysis indicates that the TPP exemption was erroneously eliminated for hundreds of homeowners, resulting in the staggering increases that are now being reported.
In one example, the tax bill for the Bellmore home of former Assessment Review Commission (ARC) Commissioner Jeff Gold shows a staggering 62 percent increase from $16,694 to $27,047, a total of $10,353. In another, Levittown resident Scott Diamond’s taxes were set to increase by 16.6 percent from $7,122 to $8,304, for a total of $1,182. Coincidentally, Gold and Diamond are the founder of and moderator for, respectively, of the “Nassau Grieve Your Tax Assessment” Facebook community group, and their expertise in assessment increased the speed with which this error was detected in Nassau’s complex assessment system.
Minority Leader Abrahams and his fellow caucus members wrote to Acting Nassau County Assessor Matt Cronin on Tuesday, Oct. 11 to demand an immediate investigation into the incident so that the errors will be addressed, and corrective actions can be implemented. It is also expected that these problems will be the subject of questions during the Department of Assessment’s budget hearings, which are set for later in the day on Wednesday, Oct. 12.
“It is incumbent upon the Department of Assessment to immediately determine the full extent of these errors so that it can expeditiously submit correction of error petitions to the Legislature for approval,” Minority Leader Abrahams wrote to Acting Assessor Cronin. “Additionally, the Department must conduct all necessary outreach to the public to ensure that no property owner inadvertently pays more than they truly owe.”
Thereafter, Minority Leader Abrahams continued, “it is our belief that an independent investigation is necessary so that the County can determine exactly what went wrong and implement all necessary corrective actions and best practices in the interest of preventing such a shocking error from occurring again.”
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