NYC Finance Chief Lauds Amnesty

NYC Finance Chief Lauds Amnesty
Program Could Take in $80 Million

Continued from the Home Page

The amnesty on New York City business and excise taxes ran from last October to Jan. 23, and by early in the new year it had already reaped $52 million in back taxes, according to New York City Finance Commissioner Martha Stark.

“We could not be more pleased with the amnesty,” Stark said during the New York State Society of CPAs’ Tri-State Taxation Conference. “We felt it would give us a chance to clean up some old debt, and give taxpayers a chance to catch up.”

Stark said the finance department expects the amnesty to bring in as much as $80 million in back taxes, millions of dollars more than the department originally anticipated.

Under the amnesty program, the department waived penalties and reduced interest for qualifying businesses and self-employed taxpayers who owed for tax years ending on or before Dec. 31, 2001. The amnesty covered general corporation tax, the unincorporated business tax, the commercial rent tax and others.

The department went to some length to publicize the amnesty, with advertisements on cable television, a website with tools to determine how much money taxpayers would save by paying only the reduced interest rates under the amnesty, and notification of taxpayers with outstanding bills. Stark said the department originally intended to send notices to 200,000 taxpayers but wound up mailing 500,000 notices to taxpayers to resolve their old debt.

By early January, 10,000 taxpayers had applied for amnesty, and at least 3,000 of them had downloaded applications from the department’s website, Stark said during the Jan. 8 conference.

The plan, Stark said, was working, but was not foolproof. Some practitioners agreed, complaining during a question-and-answer period that clients were still being sent bills—as opposed to amnesty applications—for taxes owed on years covered by the amnesty. Stark said the department would look into such discrepancies.