Maintenance: A co-op's mandated, continuous, and predictable source of income. Used to pay a buildings operating expenses.

General Assessment: A co-op's mandated but time-period-limited source of income. Usually established for a set period of months and used to pay for a co-op's one-time expenses like capital improvements and repairs.

R/E Tax Abatement Assessment: A procedure used by co-ops to offset the R/E tax abatement the Dept of Finance grants directly to shareholders. The abatement reduces the amount of annual R/E tax the co-op owes, but since the money saved by the abatement is supposed to be passed through by the co-op directly to shareholders, the co-op never sees any direct benefit from the abatement. The R/E Tax Abatement Assessment is usually enacted each year by co-ops and is calculated to be the same amount as the abatement. Thus the net effect of the abatement on the co-op's operating income is negligible.

Transfer "Flip" Tax: A fee imposed by a co-op on the transfer of its shares from seller to purchaser. It can be an absolute fixed amount, a fixed amount per share, a percentage of the purchase price, a percentage of the net sales income, or any other calculation based on the transaction. Transfer Tax should be used to "top off" capital reserve accounts. It should never be relied on when calculating a budget or predicting annual income, because it is completely unpredictable. If there are no sales during a year, there's no additional income.

Bottom line: Each source of income serves a different purpose and in most circumstances they are not interchangeable. In governing a co-op, income predictability is paramount and the different revenue streams should be relied on accordingly.