In 2011, New York enacted a property tax cap that limited the growth of school and local property taxes. The Empire Center calculated in 2015 that New Yorkers would have paid an additional $7 billion in school taxes alone if the 30-year pre-cap rate of levy growth had continued.

The cap, which was renewed through 2020 at the end of the 2015 legislative session, continues to weather attacks from opponents, who portray it as improperly hindering their ability to raise taxes. These efforts have ranged from unsuccessfully challenging the constitutionality of the cap to creating loopholes under which taxes could be increased, to eliminating the supermajority requirement for school budgets that would exceed the cap.

Recent analysis and commentary by the Empire Center:

• Will Albany bust the cap? – Ken Girardin, NYTorch, June 10, 2016
• The tax cap works, again – Ken Girardin, NYTorch, May 18, 2016
• Tax cap survives latest challenge – E.J. McMahon, NYTorch, May 6, 2016
• Tax cap a near-freeze for 2016-17 – E.J. McMahon, NYTorch, Jan. 21, 2016
• Crocodile tears of NY’s tax cap – E.J. McMahon, New York Post, Oct. 5, 2015
• LI towns cry a river on tax cap – E.J. McMahon, NYTorch, Sept. 29, 2015
• “Warning”: taxes might not rise – Ken Girardin, NYTorch, June 11, 2015
• The cap-buster count, 2015 edition – Tim Hoefer, NYTorch, May 20, 2015
• School tax growth sinks under cap – E.J. McMahon & Ken Girardin, Research and Data, May 18, 2015