HOUSE owners are pay ing an average of 46.7 percent more in property taxes since 2002 – even though the city raised the tax rate by only 18.5 percent – because of soaring assessments.
A study conducted by the Independent Budget Office at the request of The Post found that owners in some of the poorest neighborhoods are actually paying more on a percentage basis than those in wealthier areas.
The bills for homeowners in Ocean Hill-Brownsville in Brooklyn and the Highbridge section of The Bronx, both low-income neighborhoods, jumped by 61.8 percent over the last five years.
By comparison, in the well-off Riverdale-Kingsbridge area of The Bronx, the tax bill climbed just 43.3 percent.
The figures for co-ops and condos were equally perplexing. Co-op owners in Park Slope and Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, where property prices approach those in some of Manhattan’s top neighborhoods, saw their tax bills climb just 27.1 percent.
In Manhattan’s middle-class Washington Heights and Inwood, meanwhile, the co-op tax tab soared 69.2 percent.
Sam Miller, a spokesman for the Finance Department, said taxes on small homes are calculated under a formula created by the state that results in disparities. The mayor’s $400-a-year rebate for small-home owners is reflected in the figures.
The law prohibits the city from increasing assessments on one-, two- and three-family houses by more than 20 percent over five years, or more than 6 percent a year.
But there are no such limits for new houses, which enter the tax rolls at full value.
“The newer buildings don’t benefit from the caps,” said Miller.
And when values are surging, as they have been in recent years, a home worth $393,000 might have just about the same tax bill as one valued at $1.5 million in two different Brooklyn neighborhoods.
That’s what the New York Public Research Interest Group discovered in 2003, when it issued a blistering critique of the property-tax system.
“They’ve acknowledged this is a problem,” said NYPIRG’s Gene Russianoff, adding that the city has made the small adjustments that it can.
But, he warned, “they will never catch up unless the law is changed.”