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Is A Real Estate Instrument Filing Fee An Unauthorized Tax?
Local governments have significant leeway to charge fees for services they provide their residents. But fee revenue sources can be attractive options for those local governments needing to fill budget gaps without raising taxes. State law limits fees that governments charge to the amounts reasonably necessary to cover the cost of the service or regulatory program. Fees designed to generate revenue or offset the costs of other government functions are unauthorized taxes. In New York, for example, litigation pending in the Suffolk County Supreme Court is challenging fees charged for tax map verifications on real estate instruments filed with the county clerk as unauthorized taxes.
Suffolk County Tax Map Verification Fees
Suffolk County has a Real Property Tax Service Agency created and established under New York's Assessment and Improvement Law. Laws of 1970, Chapter 957. Among the duties the Legislature assigned to the RPTSA are preparing and maintaining county property tax maps, providing advisory appraisals to towns within the county, advising and supporting town assessors, providing annual reports, supporting county land acquisitions, and performing any other duties authorized by the county legislature pertaining to the assessment and taxation of real property. Real Property Tax Law §1532.
Suffolk County later added a section to its Administrative Code that requires instruments presented for filing or recording with the County Clerk "which affect or pertain to title of land" in the County be verified against the RPTSA's tax maps. The same provision authorizes the Suffolk County Clerk to charge a tax map verification fee, which the county has amended multiple times since 1989. As of 2017, Suffolk County charged $200 per parcel for land instruments presented for filing or recording and an additional $300 fee for mortgage instruments presented for filing or recording.
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