L.I. Towns Set to Stem Illegal Tax Examptions

By MICHAEL HEUSNER

Brookhaven town officials on Tuesday publicized a planned crackdown on homeowners illegally receiving government tax exemptions.

Town Supervisor Ed Romaine announced the clampdown.

“We are enhancing our efforts to make sure that no one claims a STAR exemption that they are not entitled to,” he said, referring to STAR, or The New York State School Tax Relief Program, in which owner-occupied primary residences whose owners combined income is less than $500,000 are exempt from the first $30,000 of the full value of a home from school taxes.

Several residents across the Stonybrook and Brookhaven area have been illegally receiving STAR benefits, either through buying homes where the previous owner was a STAR recipient, and not registering a change of status, claiming abandoned buildings as STAR beneficiaries, and claiming STAR benefits on homes with illegal tenants, officals alleged.

According to Romaine this has cost the town $13 million in 2011 alone, with “at least a dozen” homes in the Stonybrook area having a false star exemption and “ a few hundred” in Brookhaven overall.

One official added that at least 30 to 35 cases of landlords receiving illegal benefits had been referred to the DA over the years. According to Romaine, STAR exemptions were easier to go after than zoning or coding violations, because many times landlords were simply using abandoned buildings, which required only a small amount of research to bust. As many as 50 to 60 homes were stopped from receiving fraudulent benefits right out of the gate, due to increased vigilance on the part of authorities, officials said.

Romaine cited the case of a one-family home with 21 residents in Gordon Heights, and vowed to “bring our community back to what it was intended, a single-family community, not a rental community.”

A representative from the Brookhaven attorney’s office advised residents who suspected a homeowner of receiving fraudulent STAR benefits to call 451-TOWN.