New York State’s Office of Real Property Tax Services describes ours as the most complex property tax system in the nation. In all counties but Nassau and Tompkins, assessment is a city, town and/or village function. Thus, while most states have fewer than 100 assessing units, New York has 1,100. Of these, 88% had appointed assessors in 2010 and 12% elected assessors. New York State law requires that assessments are to be made at a uniform percentage of market value each year. However, this applies only to “each assessing unit”, leaving room for large discrepancies in property tax rates from municipality to municipality. Moreover, the multiplicity of types of local governments that rely on the real property tax, combined with non-coterminality of the boundaries of taxing and assessing units, requires a major state equalization effort to assure as much fairness as possible in the distribution of the tax burden.  Nonetheless, disparities in tax treatment among property classes continue to widen.  In 2011, the Council of State Taxation, a business supported group, ranked New York State worst in the nation in property tax administration.

Furthermore, at a time when property values have been declining, still in some jurisdictions - New York City, for example - tax assessments have continued to rise.  This means that despite spending caps, and no tax rate raises, the taxpayer's taxes may still be rising.