I understand they are taxed under the code as a "condo" but isn't the point of the article that they are not taxed at the rate of a normal condo vis-a-vis their sales price?

Since the sales price is 6 sigma to the right on the bell curve, it doesn't surprise me at all that the tax rate as a percentage of sales price would be similarly offset to the left. I think it would have made the analysis better to have also ranked the dollar value of tax revenue per dwelling unit, and you would see they are paying an extremely high share under that metric. But then the title of the article would have to be "Why Billionaires Pay the Most Per Capita Property Taxes in New York".

Another way to look at it, is if the tax rate were 1.7% instead of 0.017% then the building could not have been built. If the rate were 0.17% the sales price would have been closer to $10 million than $100 million. I think there is no scenario where the city gets the tower, the condo sells for $100 million, AND the city takes even .17% each year in property taxes.

The article reads like the city paid to build the tower and is giving the units away rent-free. It just seems like such a distorted view of the full macroeconomic impact, when in fact NYC is getting exactly what Bloomberg meant when he said he hoped the billionaires to move in.