We have similar taxes in major cities in Canada (including both metro and provincial taxes here in Vancouver).

Housing is still massively squeezed and unaffordable for many in the Vancouver metro area, but the taxes definitely have encouraged some homeowners to sell or rent their properties, especially foreign investors, and their seem to be few or no downsides for people of middle-class and even moderately-affluent incomes.

I doubt that NYC will lose too much sleep over the protestations from extraordinarily wealth plutocrats.

It seems like a place like Manhattan might benefit from first up-zoning the low slung sections that are currently 4-8 stories.

My point here is that I'd start with trying to build enough housing before spending political capital on marginal things that neither unlock supply nor generate much revenue.

Yup

First it's the second yachts...

Then it's the first yachts!

What's the context here? Isn't he doing enough?

Even in worse case scenario, which this isn't, the affected persons would at most try to cheat the system. This proposal is really narrow to non-primary residences, that are also very valuable. None of which will affect 99.999% of the population.

Gosh, 1% on $1m, that's almost $10k! I can see that how would discourage homeownership and distort the market.

Actually wait, I can't.

Who are you protecting here?

You realize a very small subset of the population can afford a million dollar home, let alone a five million dollar home?

The majority of the city does not give a shit.

Property taxes already exist. There is no obvious reason why this particular property tax would be legally problematic.

The tax is also likely politically difficult to counter. Consider how limited in scope these taxes are, how the tax revenue benefits residents who live in NYC through providing more revenue for services without taxing residents at all, and how the only constituent the taxes negatively affects are non-residents (aka it’s non-trivial to argue that these people should even be considered constituents) who benefit from the services the city offers through stable apartment prices that nicely store their wealth yet provide little value in return.

The only rebuttal one could conceive is the value these high-net-worth individuals altruistically provide the city through developing office space and giving jobs to the city is not worth risking, but that is like saying the tail wags the dog. The reason these CEOs go to NYC is because that is where the talent and economic clustering is: if these high-net-worth individuals could get the talent they need to run their firms in Miami and Austin, they would have done so already. They have tried and they have failed up until this point.

Regardless, a claim into the future in such a complex system such as the markets and the judicial system (especially a common law system) always relies on induction which is never going to be deterministic. However, this tax is just another property tax meaning it likely will stand in court. Additionally, given that the opposition has very weak rebuttals against a well-versed counterparty implies the legislature or other political machinery won’t have a strong enough incentive to fight this tax.

NYS already has tax breaks for one's primary residence which varies by income and a tax on the sale of homes >$1Mil. Given how entrenched those are, I have trouble imagining a way in which this new tax is incongruous with existing rules.

i am not in NY, but aren't yearly auto registrations scaled significantly by the value of the auto?

that seems to be true in Arizona, for example.

"seeing the ultra rich paying far less taxes then they are."

Is this actually true? I thought looking at the aggregates that the top 10% pay something like 1/3rd of all income/cap gain taxes.

The top 1% of NYC residents contribute 40-48% of all personal income tax collected in NYC. When you extend that to Top 2.5% you cross 51%.

Personal Income Tax accounts for around 31% of collected NYC tax revenue.

"The rich" also pay property tax. NYC's poorer residents generally don't have property to pay tax on. Everyone pays sales tax equally.

So how exactly are the ultra rich paying "less taxes"?

Taxing second homes would halt construction? Plenty of people out there wish to own a first home, myself included.

New York City rent exists at an equilibrium.

The draw for people to move there is so intense, that any draw downs in rent are met with upticks in immigration.

Adding housing stock in NYC is not like adding housing stock in Lawnsdale Ohio. Almost by definition you cannot out build the demand for housing.

I don't think the demand for second homes worth over $5 million is a major driver of construction of new units in NYC.

It’ll halt construction on luxury second homes? Wonderful!

Those homes are built for money laundering anyway. Good riddance.

So it'll still raise at least 300 million? Sounds like a great thing to me. I dunno why you think it doesn't matter.

I think that this has the benefit of both raising a non trivial amount of money as well as reducing housing demand from the wealthy in a supply constrained market