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Jackie Colson-Miller

Jackie Colson-Miller, CIPS
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The Latest News on Florida Property Tax Reform

The Joint Select Committee on Property Tax Relief and Reform met on May 21, 2007. Here is their condensed outline of the agreement reached, along with my comments in RED. This is not the FINAL plan, but it has been agreed upon by the committee, and the letter was issued by Ken Pruitt, President of the Senate and Marco Rubio, Speaker of the House.

The Florida Legislature meets June 12 to adopt a Tax Reform Plan.

What I find interesting, is this letter, has not been printed by the Tampa Tribune. They continue to print misinformation about how our services will be cut. I received the letter, and most of my tax reform information, through my political connections, who hoped I could explain what the new plan would mean to the Florida Taxpayer. Here is my attempt at that.

Immediate Tax Relief and Reform This requires a vote by the Legislature, but not the taxpayers and will be seen on the tax bill for November 2007.

-Cities and counties will be required to cut their property taxes. The level of cuts will be based on a formula based on their past taxing performance. I needed to make a call for clarification on this! Warren Weathers, Sr. Property Appraiser for Hillsborough County was very helpful, as always. He explained that the Legislature will look at all the counties in Florida and compare their budgets vs. population growth and property values, for a certain time period (i.e. the past 5 yrs). If a very fiscally conservative county, had a 45% budget increase over the past 5 years and another county had a 98% increase, then the fat county would be required to rollback their taxes to the fiscally appropriate level. That rollback dollar amount for the county budget would ultimately cut the overall millage rate in that county. The Hillsborough County Property Appraiser’s office had a 2.15% budget increase for 2007. Thank you to Rob Turner, Warren Weathers and the entire staff of the Appraiser’s office, not only for their fiscal responsibilty, but also their willingness to always answer my questions, and emails with a smile and great information!

-A cap on future property taxes will ensure that government cannot grow faster that personal income. It seems government budget increases cannot exceed the annual cost of living index, or GPI. Recent increases in property values sent property tax revenues soaring and some counties took advantage of increased revenues, so their spending soared along with it!

-Local governments may override the cap and the cuts by an extraordinary vote. That would require a vote beyond a simple majority, i.e. 60% of the voters, referendum, or other heightened standard. This is the ONLY way local governments can override the budget cuts. Voters will decide.

-Every category of property taxpayers will benefit from the mandatory tax cut and cap. The attempt is to reduce the tax bill for every property owner.

Further Tax Relief and Reform This requires a 60% vote from Floridians because it is an amendment to the State Constitution. This is scheduled for January 29, 2008 during the Presidential Primary Election.>

-The Save our Homes cap and the homestead exemption are replaced by a new homestead exemption based on the value of the homesteaded property. The $25,000 homestead exemption is replaced by a plan that offers a homestead exemption bases on a percentage of your property value. There will not be an annual cap with this plan, but most taxpayers will benefit from this.

-The homestead exemption will be based on a tiered percentage approach . The final percentages and tiers are yet undecided, but I have discussed this example in my previous articles on tax reform. There will be four tiers of percentages for exemption, based on a propertys value.

-The few property owners who would have greater benefits under the current Save our Homes Amendment will be grandfathered, to the greatest extent allowed by law. The legislature is really attempting to cut every tax bill, or not raise anyones tax bill.

-It will preserve all existing constitutional exemptions, i.e. disabled veterans. The additional exemptions for widows, disabled, etc., will not change.

**Public Schools will not be required to reduce property taxes!**Contrary to what the media has been promoting about services being cut, school funding will not be affected by the new plan.

The committee is very busy working out the details for additional relief for the low-income elderly, incentives for affordable housing, valuation issues and other related matters, before the full Legislature convenes June 12.

I think the Legislature is working hard to make property taxes affordable for all Floridians. You can find the entire letter Here; File Attachment: PropertyTaxUpdate (1).pdf (188 KB)

And, of course, stay tuned to The Real Estate Sizzle, for all of the burning issues in Real Estate!

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 7th, 2007 at 5:09 pm and is filed under Property Taxes in Florida, Real Estate News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “The Latest News on Florida Property Tax Reform”

  1. JIM says:
    June 7, 2007 at 7:57 pm

    THANKS JACKIE — JACKIE FOR STATE REPRESENTATIVE!

  2. Janet Mendez says:
    June 8, 2007 at 10:41 am

    RE: A cap on future property taxes will ensure that government cannot grow faster that personal income. It seems government budget increases cannot exceed the annual cost of living index, or GPI. Recent increases in property values sent property tax revenues soaring and some counties took advantage of increased revenues, so their spending soared along with it!

    The popular rule is that if they have it, they must spend it or they won’t get it the next year. Too bad for us that there’s no reward system for “saving” not spending all of the budgeted money!

  3. Lisa Spencer says:
    June 8, 2007 at 2:48 pm

    You are a credit to your profession and an asset to our office. Rather than “Complain and Wait” you are taking an active interest in an issue that impacts all of us. Thank you for your research and commentary.

  4. Rae says:
    June 19, 2007 at 3:15 pm

    I just want to know why other states and counties can survive on a much lower tax percentage. I would love to do and audit of Hillsborough County, and others and then compare them with Fairfax county in VA! Do you dare…

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