The Nassau County Legislature voted unanimously to clear the way for correcting 842 erroneous school tax bills that caused impacted homeowners to be overcharged by more than $1.5 million. First exposed by the Minority Caucus on Oct. 12, the error was caused by a failure of the Department of Assessment to correctly apply the Taxpayer Protection Plan’s five-year phase-in to those homes.
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, homeowners who were impacted by this error saw their tax bills soar by nearly $1,800 on average – and in at least one extreme case, by over $10,000 – because the TPP exemption was erroneously eliminated.
Following today’s action, Nassau County Legislature Minority Leader Kevan M. Abrahams (D – Freeport) issued the following statement:
“No homeowner should ever be overcharged on their property taxes like these 842 property owners just experienced. Now that the Legislature has authorized corrections, refunds must be immediately delivered to any homeowner who has overpaid,” Nassau County Legislature Minority Leader Kevan M. Abrahams (D – Freeport) said. “The Department of Assessment must then complete an independent investigation into exactly how these errors occurred so that we can implement safeguards and prevent similar mistakes from happening in the future.”
—Submitted by the Nassau County Legislature
