New York City homeowners are claiming they’ve been overpaying their property taxes and are having trouble getting refunds. The issue affects people who live in condos and co-ops throughout the city, with some saying it’s adding up to millions of dollars citywide.

Discrepancy in Square Footage

Homeowners like Ellen Silverman, who lives in a landmarked co-op building on the Upper West Side, say the problem lies in the city’s calculation of their building’s square footage. Silverman’s co-op board hired an architect to recalculate the square footage, which revealed a discrepancy of 22% less than what the Department of Finance had recorded.

The city uses a complicated formula based on the amount of livable square footage to determine how much each building pays in property taxes. Silverman says that with the corrected square footage, her building has been overpaying its property taxes for over 40 years, amounting to millions of dollars.

Difficulty in Obtaining Refunds

Despite submitting an Administrative Review Application to Correct an Assessment or Tax Due to a Clerical Error or Error in Description, also known as a Clerical Error Report, the city denied the building’s request for a prorated refund for the previous six years. The city only allows refunds for a maximum of six years, but in this case, the refund was denied.

Stan Russo, a property tax consultant, says he’s analyzed hundreds of buildings and believes that 70% of condos and cooperatives have their square footage overstated. He also claims that the city is making it more difficult for building residents to get their tax money back, or at least credited to future payments.

Last year, the city reduced the amount of time eligible for a refund from six to three years, if it’s granted. Russo says that the city is not giving refunds, and instead, is making it difficult for residents to get their money back.

Original reporting: Brookhaven News – ABC7 New York — read the source article.