Kiryas Joel, NY – A shopping center, a five-story office building and dozens of other Kiryas Joel properties could lose at least part of their property-tax exemptions as the result of a crackdown by the Town of Monroe assessor’s office.
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Fifty parcels with a combined market value of nearly $52 million have been tentatively placed on the town tax rolls and will get their first bills for town and county taxes come January unless they prove their exemptions were warranted.
The properties range widely in value and include homes that claimed exemption as synagogues; apartment complexes for low-income tenants; and the village’s two most conspicuous commercial centers: its bustling shopping strip on Forest Road and the 80,000-square-foot Business Center that opened on Bakertown Road in 2008.
The strip mall has never been taxed since it opened in 1987 because its owners were deemed exempt. The village government owned the property for years until transferring it in 2004 to a real estate arm of the United Talmudical Academy, the religious school system for thousands of children in the Satmar Hasidic community.
Believe me its not the only town that has this problem
Good; I hope they do it in Monsey too.
It’s not like the federal government sends the local town a check to make up for the lost tax dollars, WE the honest citizens foot that bill with higher taxes.
I believe Viznitz has 100’s of tax-exempt houses in Ramapo. That would be very nice except that “toishvei monsey” are footing the bill.
YOISHER???
let’s criminally prosecute the submissers of the paperwork for criminally neglagently documents.
Oy vey!! A broch tzu col,umbus !!(old adage)
It’s a great start, although we’ll hear screams of anti-Semitism. Sorry; these shady deals with exemptions hurt plenty of Jews too – the ones that pay their taxes. Hopefully this gets done in Monsey and Brooklyn too.
the article says ‘unless they prove their tax exempt status’ which some of them can (like the shopping center that belonged to the village, but now to the yesiva, or the low income housing). a lot of it is just a matter of paperwork. The Record is just trying to make a story out of it
Who is it they think pays for all the welfare they collect?
As a tax payer I am tired of everybody getting tax exempt status for their home, followed by special utility rates.
Its all worth if they credit or lower the tax for other people to average it out, if not, mah hoili chachumim betekantom?? If they don’t do it, there is no reason to celebrate, its yidish gelt
For a change, there seems to be widespread support among the heimeshe community that all these mosdos that branch out into commercial uses of property should obtain or retain tax emempt status and force the rest of us to pay their tax burden. I don’t think there are any criminal violations here but hopefully this is just the first round of legal efforts to deny such exemptions except where the land use is truly a legitimate tax exempt purpose. They should pay their current taxes and maybe even be billed for back taxes.
The question is where will the money for these additional taxes come from? Will there be a special “emergency fund” to help pay the taxes of these establishments? It should not come from the regular tzadakah funds.
What are you guys celebrating? Celebrating that this will cause your taxes to go down? Forgetaboutit. This won’t happen.
What will hapen, your schar-limud (tuition) will go up.
But under state law, only the parts of the shopping center used for an exempt purpose — such as municipal offices — should have been tax-free. Dorothy Post, the town’s longtime assessor, was reconsidering exemptions for that and other Kiryas Joel parcels until her retirement in March, when the job fell to her successor, Stephen Ruelke. Ruelke made 50 village properties fully taxable on the May 1 tentative tax rolls, but he has said that he may recommend restoring part or all of the exemption on certain properties before July 1 after getting more information about how they are used. He said he didn’t have time to do such investigations before the tentative tax roll was due. The United Talmudical Academy offshoots that own the shopping center and office building have filed grievances with the town Board of Assessment Review, saying that both properties should be fully exempt because the owners are nonprofit organizations. They claim the buildings are being used for community service. Some property owners may have a strong case to restore their exemptions. One is the rabbi and Satmar leader Aaron Teitelbaum, whose Sanz Court home — owned by Congregation Avnei Zedek —
not a single jew would benefit from this since the town and village has separate assessers and they would only have to pay for the town tax, and if anyone knows how the the town of monroe works, know that they will never pass it to the people and that’s why they have almost the highest taxs in new york, so why celebrate when all this does is higher your sechar melimed
I would say to do the same thing in Rockland County, except the article is (deliberately) unclear.
Are there any privately owned properties involved or are all of these properties owned by mosdos? If they are owned by the mosdos then post #12 is right.
Mazel Tov! It’s about time to crack down on these tax cheats. They want everything their way, pay for nothing, and then when they get caught scream anti-semitism from every rooftop.
I only hope they begin going after some of the home owners as well. Some of the property owners have deals with yeshivas to own their homes, businesses to use as an end run around the tax laws.
But they want and take everything that is not nailed down.
When they start helping us with school tuition (which property taxes are for) than you are fair to demand that everyone pay up, until then zai shtil.
if there wouldnt’ve been soooo much oposition to the vilage of kj expanding with seeing soooo many opposing this expansion expressing anti semitic remarks, i would’ve said no anti semitism involved. but when hitler followers work on getting jews as far away as possible hitler followers mentioning anything regarding jewishness its anti semites head saying something against jews again!
Bottom line, Nothing less then anti semtism.
Any property owned by a IRC 501(c)(3) Non-Profit that is used to further its Health, Education or Welfare exempt purpose is properly exempt under the law. If a property is used for unrelated for-profit business uses or rented to an unrelated for-profit businesses, the property is taxable. It is cut and dry tax law. The organization can prove its case by presenting its Financial Statements and General Ledger as proof of its operation as a Non-Profit Organization. Quite simply, if each Non-Profit was taxed as an ordinary business, it would have that much bigger operating defecit to fundraise from its donors at a time when incomes are shrinking and donations are decreasing. President Obama is also proposing that the tax exemption for charitable donations be phased out for higher income earners. If this passes, soon the charities will find it extremely difficult to operate as they have in the past. Many will be forced to close or eliminate services. Then the poor and needy will be begging in the streets as was the case in the early 1900s where life expectancy was 45..
Every time I see a comment beginning with the word “let’s” my heart sinks.
In nine cases out of ten the proposer of the suggestion that follows has given absolutely no cogent thought to the viability of his proposal.
To # 28. Your a big big shoite. To say that goyim commit less crime then kj just shows how ill informed you are about kj. Kj has a staff of top quality lawyers for legal guidance on every step they do because they are packed with mosrim that will maser just anything so there’s no way of major fraud they are under the spot light 24/7. Did you read comment #15 ? Read it and then tell me how much fraud is involved here