Schenectady Tops, Long Island Last in New York Region Tax Burden Ranking

Property owners in the city of Schenectady pay the highest effective tax rates in the Capital Region -- a total burden that is nearly twice the regional median, according to a new comparative database of local taxes released today by the Empire Center.

 Click here for The New “Property Taxes by Location” tool provided by seethroughny.net
The Benchmarking New York tool features two searchable databases with multiple ways to analyze and compare data for different communities

The Empire Center has ranked the “Top 20” and “Bottom 20” effective tax rates for 2010 in every region
of the state, along with a ranking of effective tax rates in cities. With New Yorkers preparing to vote on
school budget propositions next Tuesday, the Center also has developed an Internet-based tool allowing
taxpayers to compute and compare total school district, municipal and county tax burdens across the
state. The rankings are based on data from the state comptroller’s office and exclude New York City and Nassau County, which use complex property classification systems that can make the effective tax rates especially misleading.

Schenectady’s average effective tax rate came to $39.57 per $1,000 of property value, compared to a
Capital Region median of $21.97 and a statewide median of $27.43. The lowest effective property tax rate
in the Capital Region was in the town of Edinburgh. The Edinburgh rate averaged just $7.15 per $1,000.
In general, as the rankings indicate, New York’s highest effective property tax rates are imposed in cities
and rural areas with low property values, while the lowest effective rates are found in resort communities
and wealthy areas with very high property values.

Tim Hoefer, director of the Empire Center, said today’s report and the new property tax search tool
linked on the “Benchmarking NY” tab at the Center’s SeeThroughNY.net website present property tax
burdens in much finer detail than the Tax Foundation’s widely publicized national ranking of tax
burdens at the county level, which are based on U.S. Census surveys.

“Many New York towns and cities contain parts of multiple school districts and villages, which means
there are literally thousands of different combinations of taxing jurisdictions to compare,” Hoefer noted.
“Our web tool makes it possible for users to drill down to a specific school district in a particular town,
and to easily compare multiple jurisdictions. Since school districts typically represent the largest portion
of property tax bills, we believe it is especially useful to have the data available in advance of budget
votes on May 17.”

Highlights of the report’s findings include the following:
• Residents of the Village of Wellsville in New York’s Southern Tier bear the state’s heaviest
property tax burden, with an effective rate of $62.20 per $1,000, which is more than double the
regional median.
• The lowest-taxed community in the state is the Village of Sagaponack in Long Island’s
Hamptons, which had an effective rate of just $1.32.
• Fulton, in Oswego County, is the most heavily taxed city in New York, with an effective rate of
$51.14.
• The Rye School District portion of the City of Rye in Westchester County is the lowest-taxed
area within cities, with an effective rate of $15.68.

BenchmarkingNY’s popular local government budget and revenue comparison tool, which allows
users to view and compare spending between local governments and school districts, excluding only
New York City, has also been updated to include the most current data available.

Property Taxes in New York Communities

Published by Empire Center for New York State Policy