Over the past seven years, New York's cap on local property tax levies has generated billions of dollars in savings for homeowners and businesses, compared to previous trends. The cap has been especially effective in restraining school property taxes, which have long been the largest and fastest-growing component of New York's tax burden.
The cap is flexible: its baseline “allowable levy growth factor” of 2 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is less, is modified by locally variable exclusions and exceptions, and can be overridden by a 60 percent vote of district residents. Nonetheless, advocates of higher school spending contend the law is unduly restrictive. “The tax cap … hurts our poorest districts the most, placing the most severe limits on their ability to raise funds and punishing parents and other taxpayers in low-wealth districts who try to provide more funding for their children,” says the head of the statewide teachers' union.
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