About TCA
Tax Correction Agency (TCA) was founded in 1991 by Lance Geller and Peter Norberto to provide professional representation for homeowners seeking real estate tax relief. Utilizing proprietary computer programs, and in accord with taxpayer rights guaranteed by New York State law, TCA represented over 2,000 Nassau County homeowners in its first year, and won over 97% of its cases.
In the decades since then, TCA has filed about 400,000 residential property tax grievances in jurisdictions across New York. Today, we work exclusively in Nassau County.
We have always done business as Tax Correction Agency; no name change in 33 years.
The Process of Grieving Your Property Tax Assessment in Nassau County
A property tax grievance is the process of challenging your assessed value, also known as your assessment. This is the number to which many other numbers are applied in the calculation of your property taxes, which are your school and general levy bills. All other things equal, a lower assessed value means you pay less in taxes.
Homeowners in Nassau County are notified each January by the Nassau County Assessment Department of their property’s tentative assessed value for the tax year that starts twenty-one (21) months later. For example, this January 2024 Nassau homeowners receive their Notice of Tentative Assessed Value for 2025/26. That is the assessment year starting with the first-half school bill in October 2025.
Under New York State law, homeowners have a right to challenge that value, regardless of what it is or how the Assessment Department came up with it. You can challenge it on your own, or you can challenge it by way of representation. TCA is representation. We represent you first to the Assessment Review Commission (ARC), an independent agency empowered to either offer a lower final assessed value or leave the Assessment Department’s tentative unchanged. (Note that ARC cannot issue a higher final; only lower, or no change).
If ARC fails to make a satisfactory offer, and we have a case we can make at court, we may also represent you at Small Claims Assessment Review (SCAR, i.e. small claims court). We typically have an ARC result anywhere from seven to fifteen months, and if applicable go to SCAR during the summer, before the start of the tax year in October.
Whether we win at ARC or at SCAR, a successful grievance means you pay less in taxes than you otherwise would, starting with the October first-half school bill, continuing with the second-half school bill and both general levy bills.
Because a greivance is won in advance of the start of the assessment year, the savings are layered on top of every other change that occurs from one year to the next. If you were bound for a $1,000 tax increase, for example, and a grievance saves you $800, you will experience a $200 increase instead. If you were bound for a $100 tax decrease year-over-year, to give another example, and a grievance saves you $200, then your taxes decline by $300. Etc.
Savings are the difference between taxes owed at the corrected assessed value that we won, and taxes owed at the final assessed value that would have prevailed without the greivance. You will see the taxes you owe with our work on the property tax bills, and/or on the County Land Records Viewer; but you will never see the taxes you would have owed wihtout the grievance on your bills. To calculate what you would have owed, we have to recalculate the property tax bills at the assessed value we defeated, which is either your tentative assessed value, adjusted tentative assessed value (if any), or final assessed value (if one was issued before we won a case at SCAR).
Our fee is 40% of savings if we win the reduction ARC, or 50% of first-year’s savings won at SCAR. There is also a $30 court-imposed filing fee – that goes to the court, if and only if we go to court, and may or may not be refunded to you at a later date. We only bill for first-year’s savings. A lower assessed value can carry forward either in full or in part into future tax years, but we don’t bill for that – we only bill for the first-year savings pursuant to the grievance we did for that year.
There is no auto-renewal or automatic registration, though we do encourage you to sign up each year, typically in the fall, as there is no downside to you doing so. Each year requires its own authorization form, which we send you in September if you have requested it, or if you are an existing client.
All we need to get started is a signed authorization form,. You can apply online, print a form off our website, or request a form be mailed, emailed, or faxed.
Right now we are filing for the 2025/26 assessment year. That is the year beginning with your first-half school bill in October 2025, continuing until September 2026. The ARC filing deadline is currently March 1, 2024. This deadline is quite firm; if it missed, you lose the chance to challenge your assessment entirely for that year. Once received, we will process your authorization and send a follow-up letter within a week or so. Then we will file with ARC before the deadline, receive a determination by no later than March 2025, go to SCAR if necessary by summer 2025, and any effect of our work will appear first on the first-half school bill in October 2025.
You may reach us by email at info@TaxCorrectionAgency.org, by phone at (516) 933-3555 during regular business hours, by fax at (631) 467-1400, via our contact form, or by regular mail at Tax Correction Agency, 3279 Veterans Hwy Ste D-2, Ronkonkoma, NY 11779.
