Hundreds of companies have negotiated special tax deals with New York City that this year will allow them to pay $48.2 million less in property taxes than they would have without the deals.

The tax breaks have been criticized by some advocacy groups who say across-the-board tax breaks would be fairer and would create more growth than special deals offered only to some businesses. But city officials say the city comes out ahead by offering tax breaks to help businesses grow in New York and to prevent them from moving jobs out of the city.

Data provided to The New York Sun yesterday from the City Council show that 238 companies will benefit from the special tax breaks in the fiscal year that ends in June.

The tax benefits were negotiated by the city’s Industrial Development Agency going back more than 15 years and across several mayoral administrations. The benefits are now enjoyed by companies across the five boroughs, from large multinational corporations like Federal Express to small businesses like S. DiFazio and Sons Construction, a contractor in Staten Island.

The city development agency awards the breaks as incentives to property owners that are seeking to expand their business in New York City. Under the deals, property owners are exempted from paying property taxes. Instead, owners pay an amount prescribed in a lease agreement that is usually less – and sometimes considerably less – than the companies would normally pay. For this fiscal year, the companies pay $61.4 million.

As part of city budget negotiations in June, the Bloomberg administration agreed to report to the City Council all income generated by the payments in lieu of taxes. The documents dated January 1, 2006, provided to The Sun from the office of Council Member David Weprin, a Democrat from Queens who chairs the council finance committee, was the first such report. It will now be produced quarterly.

The top 10 biggest tax breaks account for about 70% of the total benefits awarded. The tax breaks usually expire within 25 years.

The only payment deal negotiated by the Bloomberg administration within the top-ten biggest deals was with Pfizer.

The pharmaceutical company saved about $2 million this fiscal year on its New York headquarters on 42nd Street near 3rd Avenue based on an agreement authorized in December 2003.

The company with the largest tax break, as calculated by the city Office of Management and Budget, was Chase Manhattan Bank, part of JP Morgan Chase. Chase saved about $8.7 million this year for its building in the MetroTech commercial development in downtown Brooklyn. The deal was struck in 1989 under the Koch administration.

Morgan Stanley Group saved about $8.1 million for its building on 49th street near Seventh Avenue. That benefit is left over from a deal authorized by the Dinkins administration in December 1993.

NBC saved about $5 million in property taxes it would owe for properties around the city, stemming from a deal struck with Mayor Koch in December, 1988.

The Australian recycling company, Visy Paper, was awarded an annual tax benefit that was worth $3 million this year. In December 1995, the Giuliani administration agreed to help finance the company’s first Staten Island facility. In 2003, Mayor Bloomberg awarded the company additional assistance to construct another waste facility.

In another Dinkins deal, developer Larry Silverstein, who controls the lease of ground zero and will redevelop at least part of it, saved $2.2 million this fiscal year in real property tax for 120 Wall Street, a building he owns in Lower Manhattan that houses many non-profit companies.

A Staten Island chocolate manufacturer, Supreme Chocolatier, received an $800,000 discount off of its property taxes this fiscal year. The Giuliani administration awarded the benefit

to Supreme to help purchase a vacant parcel of city-owned land. At the time, the company said it planned to expand its business by constructing a 190,000-square-foot, four-story manufacturing and commercial and creating 110 new jobs.

A spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg, Jordan Barowitz, said the special deals are not tax breaks in the same way that “an apple is not an orange.”

“It is similar to a tax break, but it’s not a tax break,” Mr. Barowitz said.

Mr. Barowitz said companies are sometimes awarded the payments to generate development, or they can act as rent for leases of city owned property that is not taxable in the traditional method.

The director of a development accountability think tank, Good Jobs New York, Bettina Damiani, said the report was helpful in what has been a difficult task to acquire information about the payments from the city.

“It’s great to see more transparency in the allocation of tax breaks. While payments in lieu of taxes are only one piece of the larger corporate giveaway puzzle, this report is a step in the right direction toward a true accounting of city subsidies,” Ms. Dami ani said. “I think it’s worth noting that some of the largest benefactors in the report didn’t deserve the benefits. Either they didn’t need them or they laid off employees since taking the subsidy.”

A scholar specializing in municipal finance for the Manhattan Institute, Nicole Gelinas, said the publication of the report was a positive step in creating fiscal transparency, but she said it raises more questions that it answers.

“If we can afford to take so many companies in effect, partially off the tax rolls, then why can’t the city afford to implement business tax cuts across the board? We are giving away almost 50 million in these tax benefits and there doesn’t seem to be an underlying theme, they are given to companies from A to Z,” Ms. Gelinas said. “What we have is a tax cut based on some kind of favoritism.

“It makes you wonder, has anyone ever looked at who is continuing to get benefits and why? Some are major companies, and some look obscure. What is the rationale for the overall program?” Ms. Gelinas continued.

The special deals entered the spotlight in 2005 when the Bloomberg administration suggested using the money paid to the city by the companies getting the tax breaks – less than they would pay without the tax breaks, but still tens of millions of dollars – to help pay for a football stadium and convention center on Manhattan’s West Side.

The former speaker of City Council, Gifford Miller, accused Mayor Bloomberg of using the payments as a mayoral “slush fund,” which remained outside the city’s normal budget process and could be expended on projects without approval from the council.

After the stadium plan was rejected by a state board in June, Mayor Bloomberg signed a bill that requires more transparency in the deals and requires council approval for future use of money that the companies with the tax breaks pay to the city.

An audit by the city comptroller in August showed that generally the payments in lieu of taxes were properly accounted for, but that the administration had inappropriately diverted more than $20 million of payments to projects without going through the normal budget process.