ArticleFor homeowners in Nassau County, the recently commenced 2024/25 property tax year marks the demise of a little-known old friend – the 5-year Taxpayer Protection Program (aka “TPP”). Created by Nassau County leaders in 2020/21 to help smooth over tax increases created by the county-wide revaluation that same year, the program phased-in property tax increases evenly over a five-year period.
At the time critics noted that the program circumvented the whole point of a revaluation (i.e. bringing values up to date to make sure that each property paid its fair share of property taxes) by preserving inequities in residential taxation for an additional five years. Some also speculated that the TPP program had more to do with protecting incumbent politicians from the wrath of angry taxpayers than good assessment policy. See more here: The Taxpayer Protection Plan – Farrell Fritz
This same political self-preservation technique may also have been at work with Nassau County’s later decision to “freeze” the 2020/21 valuations for the two subsequent tax years after the 2020/21 revaluation—even as sale prices began to skyrocket upward. Despite its murky origins, the TPP succeeded in what it was intended to do – lessen the pain of higher property taxes by phasing them in slowly. Thus, as we bid goodbye to the TPP in the 2024/25 tax year, Nassau County homeowners will finally be, hypothetically speaking, paying their full fair share of taxes according to 2020 values. The only problem – median housing prices in Nassau County have soared nearly 40% from 2020 to 2024 leaving the 2020 values obsolete before they were ever fully implemented. See more here: Nassau County, NY Housing Market: 2024 Home Prices & Trends | Zillow
The moral to the story – if you truly want to achieve a fair assessment system, you might want to resist the urge to kick the can down the road.
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