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Office of the New York State Comptroller

Local Government and School Accountability

Real Property Tax Cap Information

School Districts

The New York State Department of Education is responsible for and in the process of developing the necessary written guidance materials to assist school officials in calculating their allowable levy limit. As soon as these guidance materials are publicly available, we will establish a link from this tax cap webpage to SED’s guidance, for your convenience.

The State Legislature and the Governor recently enacted legislation that establishes a “property tax cap” on the amount that a local government’s or school district’s property tax levy can increase each year. Chapter 97 of the Laws of 2011 (Part A-Property Tax Cap) establishes a tax levy limit (hereafter referred to as the “property tax cap”) that affects all local governments, most school districts in New York State, except New York City, and a host of other independent taxing entities such as library, fire and water districts. The law is effective for local fiscal years beginning in 2012 and for the 2012-13 school year.

Under this law, the growth in the property tax levy, the total amount to be raised through property taxes charged on the municipality’s taxable assessed value of property, will be capped at 2 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is less, with some exceptions. Local communities have the ability to override the cap.

This information is being provided to local government officials to assist them with implementing the property tax cap and will be updated frequently. Initially, this site will provide guidance for those local governments that will be the first to develop budgets under the new law (e.g., those that operate on a calendar year fiscal year) and will be updated in the future to provide information and guidance to school districts, local governments with fiscal years that do not coincide with the calendar year, local taxing entities and taxpayers. Please continue to check back regularly for updated information.

Please submit questions and/or suggestions to LGSAMonitoring@osc.state.ny.us