Law & Politics
Art World’s Top Players Turn Up in New York’s Pied-à-Terre Tax Database
As part of its bid to administer a new pied-à-terre tax, the city has released property rolls revealing the trophy homes of mega-dealers and collectors.
The pied-à-terre tax database released by the New York City Department of Finance (DOF) last week includes—perhaps not surprisingly—many of the art world’s leading figures.
Some, such as mega-dealer David Zwirner, Pace Gallery’s Arne and Marc Glimcher, artist Julian Schnabel, art advisor Allan Schwartzman, and collector Mitchell Rales, are listed by name.
Others, including billionaires Steve Cohen, Leon Black, and Len Blavatnik, can be linked to limited liability companies. Mega-dealer Larry Gagosian’s mansion on East 75th Street is owned by Sugar Shack LLC and has a city-assigned value of $63.3 million, according to the DOF.
Earlier this year, New York Governor Kathy Hochul put forward the pied-à-terre tax initiative to back Mayor Zohran Mamdani‘s push to close the city’s budget gap by placing a surcharge on wealthy owners whose New York properties aren’t their primary residences.
To administer the pied-à-terre surcharge, the DOF published two massive property rolls on July 24, containing approximately 960,000 records, accompanied by owners’ names, addresses, and city-assigned values.
Although the DOF stressed that inclusion does not mean a property will ultimately be taxed, the data exposed the identities—or shell companies—behind scores of trophy homes, prompting privacy concerns and a scramble among owners to establish that their properties are primary residences. The data doesn’t specify if the properties are owned by residents or non-residents.
The immediate reaction to the public files ranged from confusion to frustration.
“This is news to me,” Schwartzman said. He declined to comment further on the inclusion of his Flatiron apartment, valued by the city at $1.42 million.
“Why would my name be on the list?” said Adam Lindemann, a collector, dealer, and Artnet News contributor. The city valued his Upper East Side home at $41 million. “I’ve paid New York City taxes my entire life.”
The surcharge made some sense for out-of-towners “who have an apartment here, but yet don’t pay any taxes in New York City,” he said. “We’re paying for their safety, their security, their water, their police, their fire.”
Either way, Lindemann disagreed with releasing the names.
“It’s a violation of privacy,” he said.
Zwirner’s East Village home is estimated at $10.6 million, according to the DOF. A spokesperson for David Zwirner gallery confirmed that “David is a NYC resident and that is his primary address.”
Representatives for Black and Cohen declined to comment. Others listed in the documents did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the reactions to the DOF roll.
“On Tax Day earlier this year, I promised that we would tax the rich, and with our new pied-à-terre tax, that is exactly what we have done,” Mamdani said in a statement last week, when he announced that property owners had been notified via mail of the impending tax.
The notices apply to Phase 1 of the tax—one- to three-family homes valued at $5 million or more, and condos and co-ops valued at $1 million or more—with rates ranging from 0.8 to 6.5 percent depending on property type and value tier. Owners of family homes and condos have until August 21 to apply for an exemption, while cooperative-apartment owners have until August 24, according to DOF; formal bills go out in November.
The surcharge could have significant financial implications. Take Cohen, one of the world’s biggest collectors of modern, postwar, and contemporary art, whose net worth is around $22 billion, according to Bloomberg’s billionaire’s index. His primary residence is in Greenwich, Connecticut, but property records show he has acquired properties in the West Village in 2012 through Greenwich Heights Corporation. The completed property is valued by the city at $69.8 million, according to the DOF roll. If it does not qualify for an exemption, a 1.3 percent surcharge could generate approximately $907,478 annually for the city.
Rales, whose net worth is estimated at $3.9 billion by Forbes, is the founder of the private museum Glenstone in Potomac, Maryland. He also owns a 25th-floor unit on Central Park South valued at $2.67 million by the DOF. If it does not qualify for an exemption, it could face a 4 percent surcharge of approximately $106,724.
While the city publicized the filings with unusual aplomb this year, its archive of similar lists goes back at least until 2009, according to Benjamin M. Williams, a real estate attorney at Rosenberg & Estis who specializes in New York property-tax assessments. “It’s nothing new,” he said. “These names have been published for 20 years.”
He estimated that just 15,000 to 20,000 property owners received the notices from the DOF to prove their residence status.
“That list is over-inclusive,” he said.
Williams has advice for those who don’t want to surface in public rolls: use LLCs to buy real estate.
“If you are Pablo Picasso, you don’t buy it under Pablo Picasso,” he said. “You buy it as 1 Main Street LLC, and 1 Main Street LLC buys the property, and then you’re the owner of 1 Main Street LLC, but nobody knows that.”