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NYC attracts a lot of real estate investment funding and tourism and this in various ways help fund the city. For real estate, there's property taxes and title transfer fees and others and tourism means people taking currency from elsewhere are putting it into the local area and the state/city gets part of through sales tax and hotel occupancy taxes.
At the same time, this also exacerbates the cost of living (real estate investment funding) and crowding (tourism) in the city and sometimes the fees that are supposed to be levied aren't done in a sensible manner. The residents of NYC are a large part of what makes the city attractive to others and they are also the people who have to shoulder the negative effects these two factors bring. It makes sense then to try to get more out of these two currents for residents of the city (and the metropolitan area).
For foreign real estate investors, I think what makes sense is to first address the insane way that property tax assessments are made. NYC property taxes aren't all that high compared to many parts of the US, but the selling price is extremely high and property taxes aren't realistically adjusted with the selling price. The ridiculous assessment system is why real estate that is sold for astronomical prices then get assessed for property taxes at a price nowhere near that selling price. With this, the selling price should play a much larger factor than it does now. This affects everyone, but this will hit the well-heeled and generally recent buyers a lot harder and could likely leave some long-term residents in the outer boroughs with lower property taxes. It may make sense to lower the overall rate to make sure residents outside the foreign investment hot spots do not get property tax increases, but still gain the significant amount from proper reassessment.
There should also be a tax that gets levied on any residential or commercial space that does not have a registered permanent primary occupant exercised on any neighborhood where there's demonstrated economic ability to rent out the space.
For tourists, I think there should be some way of leveling a type of congestion pricing of sorts for any non-resident of either the city or the Tri-State area, depending on what the mode of transportation is. The tolls in the area should have a tiered pricing to reflect that. Taxis and rideshares should also have a tiered pricing system to reflect that, and when MTA finally rolls out its new fare system, there should also be tiered pricing system.
These aren't going to be so astronomically high that foreign real estate investment and tourism disappears, but it makes sense to get a lot more for all of this. These would also encourage more people who move here to more quickly change their legal place of residence and this in turn gives NYC and the Tri-State Area greater demographic weight in politics and federal funding.
When the corruption, union featherbedding, mismanagement, vote buying social spending, and generalized waste are squeezed out of the various local government agencies (not just the city government, but the MTA, PA, and really even the state government), and at that point, there can be shown a real need for more money, then and ONLY then should there be even a thought of any kind of revenue enhancement, in this form or other. It's not like NYC isn't already the highest taxed jurisdiction in the country. Given that fact, and that it appears that NYC is in a perpetual state of underfunding, it's not revenue that's the problem, it's expenditure.
And I think the soak the (fill in the blank - rich, foreigners, investors, tourists, etc.) mentality is wrongheadded. If NYers want services, infrastructure, etc., they should be willing to pay for it.
Tourists bring money with them, lots of it. They spend money in stores, restaurants, hotels, transportation, entertainment, etc. That’s what we get from them. They are a net positive from step 1, not a negative that requires a tax to make them a positive.
I think BBMW and Airborne Guy pretty much covered it. While I do think the property tax system is broken, the fact of the matter is wealthy people wanting to live here is a good thing and so is tourism (even if they get in the way sometimes). If people are so eager to live in a poor, un-prosperous city why not just move to Baltimore or Cleveland and leave us be to enjoy a successful, thriving NYC?
I'm not saying that foreign investment and tourism are bad--I explicitly went to say how they are good for the economic health of the city. My thing is that we can probably extract more from these sources than we have.
I don't think there aren't other issues with mismanagement of what NYC does get in revenue. I think that also needs to be fixed. These are not at cross-intentions with each other at all. If we use what we have and we have more to work with, they both together mean better services of all kinds within the city. You can also move some of the burden, such as the high cost of doing business, from some parts of the system to another.
The property tax system is incredibly broken and needs to be fixed.
Tourists bring in money and I'm not saying you levy something that makes it impossible for tourists to come here, but you just squeeze more out of it.
The point is that the city doesn't have any problem squeezing money out of anyone. It problem is not knowing how to not spend, both in spending every nickel it gets if not more, and spending badly.
If you own a house or apartment but nobody lives in it, NYC ships five bums to your mansion in St Petersburg or Dubai or wherever. They're your problem now
Yeah when you open up more revenue faucets in a corrupt and mismanaged city like NYC, you just get more corruption and mismanagement. We need politicians who spend within our means rather than look for more money to feed their addiction.
If you have a store sign in front of your house, you'll be begging for NYC to lower it's sales taxes..
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