Last tango in Tallahassee

It's easy to be disappointed in what appears to be the final product of this special session of the state Legislature. Lawmakers have added a couple more tax breaks for homeowners, who already have the best tax deal, and paid a little lip service to non-homeowners.

No fundamental reform, no sweeping changes, not even some of the other ideas (low-income seniors, "highest and best use," etc.) originally proposed for this session. Maybe it was too much to ask. After all, the Legislature was meeting only to decide what to do about the "super-homestead" exemption that a court had thrown off the Jan. 29 ballot.

So we end up with a mini-menu of a few more tax breaks:

* "Doubling" the homestead exemption from $25,000 to $50,000. I use the quote marks because school taxes aren't affected. But saying "double" is easier than saying, "increasing the exemption by roughly 60 percent."

* Making the homestead tax break "portable" when an owner moves to a new home, for tax breaks of up to $500,000. This does address one of the biggest complaints about our existing set-up, than people feel "trapped" in their current home.

* Putting a cap of 10 percent on how much property values can go up each year for non-homestead property. This cap is a lot weaker than originally proposed. Supposedly, this at least gives business owners some stability -- but this cap doesn't cover school taxes either. So your value increase would be capped at 10 percent for NON-school taxes, but uncapped for school taxes...

* A tax break for the first $25,000 worth of tangible personal property, which would primarily benefit business in the state.

If you're looking for a deeper, systemic reform, then look either to the annual session of the Legislature in the spring, to see if Speaker Marco Rubio has deeper ambitions, or else to the state's tax and budget reform commission.

This Legislature, at this time, has proved either unable or unwilling to do anything further.

Comments

[nan]

Hi Howard,
Did you see the comments to the Alex Leary article?
Two guys named Pete and Joe think homeowners are getting "screwed" again because they only get 3%, while businesses get 10%. LOL
Now I see why that judge struck the super exemption from the ballot as too "confusing" to the FL voters.
If this bill makes it to the Jan.29 ballot, do you think it will fail to get 60% because of all the voters who think they are being "screwed."

[Jim Johnson]

What they did is more than I expected, but it isnt much. I predicted they would do nuthin, and I'm almost right.

But they have bigger fish to fry. My kid bought a house in 2005 for 300K. She moved to Miami two weeks ago. Her 300K house is now worth 200K. Real estate deflation is gonna hurt the tax collectors.