Relates to extending certain filing deadlines for the industrial and commercial abatement program

◆ The sponsor's argument

Why Leroy Comrie says this is needed

The Industrial and Commercial Abatement Program (ICAP) is a tax abate- ment in a city with more than one million persons. New York City has used this enabling statute to adopt a local law and has a successful 1CAP abatement program. A complex formula credits businesses property tax bills during the years construction is done to improve their proper- ty. The purpose of this tax abatement was to incentivize businesses to expand. The program has been very popular and the program has met with success. However, due to the original program structure, andò dual filing dead- lines (including a preliminary application and final application) many otherwise eligible entities were not able to receive benefits because intervening governmental actions (such as stop-work orders; permitting issues and additional mandates) caused them to be unable to file the final application in a timely manner, meaning one year after the prelim- inary application. Chapter 397 of the Laws of 2017 partially addressed these challenges by granting the NYC Department of Finance the discretion to investigate the circumstances of late filings and award benefits in cases that merit it, prospectively. However, we still have a universe of businesses that were denied bene- fits under the old model where there is clear evidence that a govern- mental mandate-such as Local Law 67/2006 interfered with the ability to make a timely final 'application. This bill creates a one-time, three- month window for this specific subset of businesses to reapply for bene- fits that they were., otherwise eligible for in every other way.

This is the sponsor's own case for the bill, quoted from their memorandum. It is not Agora's description of what the bill does.