Zohran Mamdani’s pied-à-terre tax may already be on the ropes. More than half of those who have appealed to have their properties to be exempted from the tax have won, with more applications coming in and more approvals expected. That threatens to punch a sizable hole in the more than $500 million Mayor Mamdani originally projected the tax would generate.
According to the New York City Department of Finance, exemption applications had reached 10,000 by the end of last week, out of the purported 17,000 expected to be subject to the tax. Of those applications, 5,700 had already been approved.
🚨 WOW! Ugandan Mayor Mamdani's "tax the rich" pied-à-terre tax is FALLING APART — more than half of homeowners who appealed to be exempt have already WON, meaning his revenue pool has been SLASHED, per NYP BRUTAL 💀 Mamdani promised it would bring in $500 MILLION+. Now the city's own Finance Department says 5,700 of 10,000 exemption requests have been APPROVED. A judge already ruled the city has to redo the whole rollout from scratch, after it sent letters to 17,000 homeowners when the real number was closer to 10,000 Socialism fails every freaking time! He should resign. Failure.
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 11, 2026
The Mamdani administration initially sent roughly 17,000 letters to homeowners expected to face the tax on second or luxury homes. But the socialist administration overshot its initial rollout. The city now estimates that only between 10,000 to 13,000 homeowners are likely to be affected. With 10,000 exemption applications already filed, most of those potentially subject to the tax have sought a way out, leaving Mamdani’s already controversial plan with plenty of resistance and a shrinking pool of potential taxpayers.
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“I think the bigger fiscal question is whether the city’s $500 million revenue estimate was realistic in the first place,” plaintiff lawyer Ben Williams of Rosenberg & Ellis, told the New York Post.
“Once primary residences are removed and overstated market values are challenged, we may find that the amount actually collectible is significantly less than projected."
The pied-à-terre tax has also already run into trouble in court. State Supreme Court Justice Wayne Ozzi, earlier this month, ordered the city to redo its notification process because officials had improperly forced affected homeowners to prove they were exempt, rather than first using available tax records to establish whether they owed the tax. The ruling did not strike down the tax itself, and the city’s appeal put the order on hold.
Two other lawsuits take aim at the tax itself, arguing that it unfairly targets out-of-state property owners. Both cases remain ongoing in a Long Island court.
Editor’s Note: New York City is now facing the consequences of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s socialist takeover.
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