In US real estate, urban planning, and especially firefighting, a taxpayer refers to a small one or two story building built to cover the owner's annual property tax assessed for owning a parcel of land.^[1] Taxpayers are most commonly mixed use structures with commercial occupancies on the first floor and residential use above. Such a building is usually constructed with the hope that it can soon be redeveloped into a larger building capable of generating more revenue, or simply to hold a parcel of land along a new road or especially a streetcar line while waiting for value to appreciate. The building style was generally replaced with strip malls as the automobile became dominant in the mid 20th Century.^[2]

History

In the wake of the Great Depression, taxpayers proliferated across New York City, ending the period of high-rise buildings; while just 7 percent of building plans filed in 1929 for the busy 3rd, Lexington, and Madison Avenues were for one- to three-story buildings, every plan was for such a building by 1933. Despite being intended as temporary buildings, many survived for a half-century or more.^[3]

Hazards

Taxpayer buildings are criticized for being poorly or cheaply built, but allow a developer to stay in business while they wait for more favorable conditions. A fire in a taxpayer is a special hazard in firefighting. The poor quality construction often burns readily, and the architecture tends to encourage backdrafts.^[1] Many have been renovated several times over and have concealed or undocumented voids.^[2] More modern taxpayers were built with fire-resistant materials and are less of a hazard.