Last week, my 81-year-old mother called me with some news: She had been coughing up blood.
Fortunately, it had stopped a couple hours before, she said. My mom seemed flustered, but not panicked. She handles the vagaries of aging with a bemused resignation that healthmaxxing fools like Bryan Johnson would do well to emulate. So she called her doctor and was told that the office would call back with an appointment time.
But the next day, she called me again. This time, she was shaken.
She had received a letter from New York City demanding $55,048 in property taxes on the townhouse in Midtown Manhattan where she has lived since 1996. It was weird, she said, because she didn’t owe $55,048 in property taxes. She asked if I could help her figure out the letter.
The answer turned out to be the city’s new “pied-à-terre” tax, the latest make-good on Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s promise to “tax the rich.” Approved by the New York State Legislature in May, the levy is an extra annual property tax of 0.8 percent to 6.5 percent on high-end apartments and townhouses owned by people whose primary residence is not in New York City.
