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In most coops, you don't actually net any money from the abatement. It's typically flattened with an offsetting assessment in the same billing cycle. The abatement is "vapor money" that results in a reduced tax bill for the building, not actual cash that the coop is given to disburse.
That said, it is of course obligatory for coops to credit the abatement as a line item in your billing, even when it is immediately offset by a corresponding assessment. But it's not a hidden pot of gold that's being withheld; it's an accounting issue. It should definitely be credited/assessed within the fiscal year to ensure the accuracy of your annual financial report.
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I'd like to add a brief coda to Carl's good response, and answer a question I am asked every year. Why are the abatement amounts and the assessment amounts not the same?
The answer is that each is calculated by entirely different sets of rules by entirely different organizations.
Each apartment abatement is determined by the Dept of Finance using complicated algorithms. Two seemingly identical apartments can be granted very different abatement amounts. The list from the DoF is sent to either the co-op or the managing agent.
Assessments on the other hand must treat each share equally, by law. What most buildings do is divide the total amount of the abatement by the total number of shares, and assess each unit by the number of shares it owns.
The two are *never* the same. Some shareholders gain and some lose. If your abatement and assessment are identical, your managing agent did something very wrong.
I hope this helps new board members and especially new treasurers deal with those shareholders who end up in the loss column.
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