City raking in $2.5B in real estate taxes from tech firms: study

Despite misgivings held by some landlords about renting to fledgling technology firms, New York City is pulling in billions of dollars in real estate tax revenue from the sector, according to a report released last week.

Collectively, the information technology industry pays an estimated $2.5 billion each year in taxes on their commercial and residential properties, according to data analyzed by development advisory firm HR&A Advisors.

The study was sponsored by, among others, the Association for a Better New York, a not-for-profit organization.

The city gets about a $6.5 billion boost from the sector in total revenue, which includes income tax dollars and levies on sales and business income, Watchdog reported. The report also found that the number of jobs in the IT sector had increased 18 percent in the past decade, according to the blog.

Startups in the sector had a hard time finding office space in the city to lease last year, largely due to their short financial track records and shorter-than-average lease requirements, as previously reported. Meanwhile, some business leaders have recently vowed to build more tech campuses to drive job growth, and office-sharing businesses like WeWork have stepped up to provide space to firms just starting out. [Watchdog] — Angela Hunt