Residential luxury towers along Billionaires Row on June 30.
Photo: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg/Getty Images
July marked the official start of the pied-à-terre tax, an annual surcharge levied against secondary luxury homes in the city. It was signed into law as part of the state budget and found backing among both Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Governor Kathy Hochul, who has pushed back against many of the mayor’s proposed wealth taxes. But the initial rollout is prompting criticism among city residents after the government published a list of properties potentially eligible for the tax and sent letters to about 17,000 owners informing them they might be subject to it, including some who are full-time city residents. City Hall has said a list of taxable properties is published annually as part of city law, but some critics have equated it to “doxing” — like Pivot co-host Scott Galloway, whose name was included. In the latest episode, he and Kara Swisher got into all that.
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Kara Swisher: Hi, everyone. This is Pivot, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I’m Kara Swisher.
Scott Galloway: And I’ve been doxed.
Swisher: You’ve been doxed. Tell me.
Galloway: I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Mayor Mamdani has decided to release a list of the 950,000 residences with addresses and names that might be eligible for his pied-à-terre tax.
Swisher: Yeah, this is from The Wall Street Journal. This is a story. Explain it. Do you want me to explain it?
Galloway: Yeah.
Swisher: Let me read from The Wall Street Journal: “Mamdani’s administration fired a warning shot last week when it published an online list of property owners who might be subject to the surcharge on luxury second homes. The list includes owners’ names, addresses and market value of properties.”
“The release of the list threatens to stir up existing tensions between the mayor and the city’s elite. The city has also begun sending out notifications to homeowners that they might be subject to the new tax. ‘If you have a second home in New York City worth more than $5M, check your mailbox when you’re back in the five boroughs — because you’ve got mail,’” the mayor said in a post on social media.”
I assume … I have an apartment here, but I’m well below that number. I don’t love this. I can’t say I love this. It feels a little bit like doxing. Just tax them and get on with it is my feeling.
Galloway: Here’s the definition of doxing: Doxing is publishing private identifying information to expose someone to public pressure or harm without their consent, tied to status — the publisher’s disapproval. Swap “elite” for any other disavowed group. I’m a fan of this tax. I was supportive of it. Rich absenteeism should subsidize a nurse in the Bronx paying 40 percent of her income on rent. I came out in favor of this tax. This is the definition. He’s taken a legitimate source of tax revenue and he’s turning it into a wanted poster. The question I would have is, other than trying to identify and imply these people have done something wrong — and then, 18 months after a health-care CEO was executed in the street, published the list — what is the upside here? Why is he doing this?
Swisher: There’s two things. I think he’s been largely successful, but there’s two things that I think are real misses, and they’re both — well, they’re not related. They’re all related in some way. One is this luxury tax. They should not have focused on Ken Griffin. They got it passed. Hochul agreed to do it. Just tax people, that’s it. That should be it. It got passed. The leaders are going to be mad about it. Some are; some aren’t, like you. Then just tax them. This was a big mistake, to try to put targets on these people. I find it really disturbing.
The second thing was, even though I agree with the problems with Benjamin Netanyahu, to say you’re going to arrest him seems ridiculous because it’s not your job. I get why you might say, “I don’t like him, and I wish I could arrest him,” but it was sort of weird. I thought it was another weird flex — which is not his job.
And so in this case, I think he’s going to piss off the elite anyway — or many of them, not all of them — over this tax. These records are public, I think, I believe. But why call attention to them? I can look up any home if you know the address, essentially, but maybe not who’s here as a second home. I don’t know. That I don’t know.
Galloway: Well, I’ll just touch on him saying he would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu. Basically, the justification was that he’s been convicted in the International Criminal Court. There are dozens, if not hundreds of people who have been convicted in the International Criminal Court, but he’s decided to announce he’s arresting the Jew.
Swisher: Well, I’m not sure, but okay.
Galloway: Okay. Who else has he announced he’s arresting if they come to Manhattan?
Swisher: He hasn’t. He shouldn’t have done this. I said he shouldn’t have done it.
Galloway: So you and I are in violent agreement on this. He’s not only playing into the worst fears about him, but he’s making it harder for all progressives. I believe in a progressive tax structure. I believe we should raise tax rates. The Republicans, in order to create deficits and continue to transfer money from the poor to the rich, they argue that progressive tax structures are persecution. This plays exactly into that entire narrative.
Of course, I never miss an excuse to talk about myself. I left San Francisco in 2000 because I thought I was going to be rich. RedEnvelope was going public, and I thought, What do I want to do with my life? I thought, I want to teach, and I want to live in New York. New York is the greatest collision of proximity, humanity, culture, creativity, weirdness. I’m like, I want that, and I moved there in 2000. I ended up … I was not rich. I worked my ass off in New York, and I decided, You know what? I can’t afford to live here, and I moved to Florida. But I decided, I’m going to start a business-intelligence firm called L2, and I started it in New York because (a) it’s an amazing place to start a business and (b) I always wanted to have a foot in New York.
I started L2 in 2010. I sold it in 2017. I’ve spent a bunch of time this morning trying to figure out what the taxes are — not the federal taxes, but the state franchise tax, real-estate taxes, payroll taxes paid by L2 from 2010 to present to New York City and the state. It’s about $51 million. In other words, L2 is paying for what? The budget for one of the largest firehouses in downtown Manhattan is $26 million a year.
But quite frankly, what he’s saying is, “Okay.” When I sold my company in 2017, I was living in faculty housing. My dean called me and said, “Congratulations. I just saw you sold it for this. You need to move out of faculty housing,” which was fair. I bought an apartment.
And now, when he starts putting — quite frankly, when he starts putting a target, he’s implying we’ve done something wrong. He’s implying that we’re guilty of something. They have the tax rules. They don’t need this for tax reasons. As a matter of fact, if Amazon released a list of a million names and said, “These people actually owe taxes,” or “They’ve done something wrong,” or they’ve implied something bad about them, and it had a 95 percent error rate, the same attorney general under Mamdani would be issuing subpoenas right now. This plays into …
Swisher: Doxing.
Galloway: This is just plain … He’s implying we’ve done something wrong because we’re successful. New York is the last place you want to demonize success.
Swisher: Yep. I would agree.
Galloway: The reason people move to New York is they think, I want to be successful on Broadway. I want to be successful in business. I want to be successful in the arts. No one’s going to get in my fucking way if I’m really talented and work hard. We’re going to celebrate it. We’re not going to put a big R on your door and say you’ve done something wrong because you’re successful.
Swisher: Yeah, yeah, I don’t know quite why he did it, since he got the tax. The tax was going through. He’s already won, and I’m not sure why he’s doubling down with a losing move. It’s bizarre. I find that bizarre. In a time when people’s public information — even if it’s public, to call attention to it when you’re so prominent is a real problem. I mean, we all complain about Facebook and others using our information, justifiably. To do this is very similar. It feels very creepy. It feels very surveillance. It feels very …
Even if you don’t like Ken Griffin, even if you don’t like all these rich people lording it over New York, they should pay their taxes. That’s that. It should be “that’s that.” It seems really unusually pugnacious toward … I don’t understand. I was sort of shocked by this story. I’m going to wait for more reporting on this, but it seems ridiculous to call attention to it when it’s people you want to also stay here and you want to get their taxes. Anyway, I would agree with you, Scott. I don’t like it. I don’t like it. People can call us friends of rich people, but it seems unfair in every aspect.
Galloway: Ninety-five percent of the people on the list supposedly aren’t going to be subject to the tax. Other than implying these people have done something wrong and publishing their address without their permission, without their consent, what possible upside is there from publishing this list?
Swisher: I’d like to know. I would like to know what the idea is. It’s not a good one. I mean, it’s not good. It’s not good.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
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