GOP’s Bruce Blakeman vows to axe new pied-a-terre tax — as NYC plans to hire 24 people as part of chaotic rollout

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman vowed to undo Gov. Kathy Hochul’s “oppressive” and “reckless” pied-à-terre tax if elected – as it was revealed the Big Apple plans to hire dozens of employees just to process the new fee.

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Blakeman, who’s currently serving as the elected Nassau County executive, issued a dire warning Thursday saying state Democratic Party policies will drive more New Yorkers out of the city, which already carries a 12.5% local tax burden, the third highest in the country.

“This reckless tax will drive even more families, jobs, and investment out of our state, and middle-class New Yorkers will pay the price,” Blakeman said. “I will move to eliminate it on day one when I am elected governor.”

Blakeman also called out his opponent Hochul, who pushed the new tax through the state legislature as a lifeline to Big Apple Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who ran on a democratic socialist platform to tax the rich.

Although Hochul resisted calls to hike income taxes and corporate taxes to appease the fledgling mayor and his comrades, she offered Mamdani several bailouts to help him balance his first budget including the pied-a-terre tax — which puts a charge on expensive second homes in the city.

Blakeman blasted Hochul for allowing the Department of Finance to publish a list of all the Big Apple’s unoccupied non-primary residences worth more than $ 1 million — which included the names and addresses of the property owners.

“Kathy Hochul and Zohran Mamdani’s new tax publicly targets homeowners, puts them at risk of crime, assumes they’re guilty, and forces them to prove they don’t owe the government more money,” Blakeman said.

The comments come amid a chaotic rollout of the new home tax, which included unanswered questions about how the city determined who might have to pay the fee.

A number of longtime New Yorkers claimed they wrongly received notices of the new tax despite living full-time in the city. Mamdani’s rocky launch of the tax forces residents in that bind to have to prove they shouldn’t be slapped with the pied-a-terre tax.

Blakeman attacked the process as “oppressive and un-American.”

Mamdani also admitted Thursday in a separate press conference that the city needed to hire 24 new staffers across the DOF and the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings to “engage” with New Yorkers being hit with the levy of up to 6.5% on one-to-three family homes over $5 million and condos over $1 million.

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“The focus of their hiring is to engage with New Yorkers who have questions about this process,” Mamdani told reporters at an event in The Bronx.

“And one of the reasons that we started this process at this point is to ensure that New Yorkers have the requisite amount of time to engage with city government before the levying of this tax,” he added.

City Hall wouldn’t say what those new employees would cost taxpayers.

However, the city’s job site show that the DOF has 25 open spots, the vast majority of which were posted last week.

While none of the job listings specifically mention the pied-a-terre tax, many would seem to have a role in collections, real estate law or tax exemptions.

Those civil service gigs pay between $67,000 and $110,000.

City Hall told the Post Wednesday that 17,000 notices had been sent out to wealthy owners — some of whom claimed they were sent the notice by mistake.

But Mamdani downplayed the dilemma — citing that owners have until the end of next month to file their appeals if they believe they have been wrongly subjected to a tax.

“I understand the concerns that some New Yorkers have that they are facing, and I know that a new tax typically brings more questions than it does answers,” Mamdani said.

“Right now, we are working around the clock across multiple city agencies to ensure that we are engaging with New Yorkers about how we are going to be delivering a tax on secondary homes worth more than $5 million.”

Condo and homeowners who believe they were wrongly hit with the tax notice have until Aug. 21st to file a rebuttal against the charge.

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