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Helping Those With No Complaints Wrong Way To Spell Tax Relief

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 12, 2007

A new plan to cut property taxes fails to address the inequities in Florida's tax structure and does nothing to help those who have the most reason to complain - Floridians who recently purchased their homes at inflated prices and are taxed at or near market value.

Gov. Charlie Crist and the Legislature's Republican leadership will enter the third lawmaking session of the year with a general agreement on a plan to lower property taxes for most homeowners. But their plan dodges the most pressing issue: what to do about the many homeowners and small business owners without the Save Our Homes protections and who pay exorbitant property taxes.

In contrast, those who purchased homes before the rapid run-up in property values have seen only small increases in their tax bills. Those homeowners already have the benefit of a $25,000 homestead exemption and a 3 percent cap on increases in their home's taxable value. Indeed, many of these homeowners haven't complained at all.

Yet lawmakers insist on tax relief for everybody, which while popular, is not the best answer. If Crist, House Speaker Marco Rubio and Senate President Ken Pruitt want to reinvigorate the housing market and turn around the moving vans that have been leaving Florida in increasing numbers, they must begin to restore equity to the state's tax structure.

Rather than rush ahead without sufficient thought and debate so they can congratulate each other for offering the voters a choice in January, lawmakers would do better to wait until spring and the regular session. By then, the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission currently holding public meetings throughout the state will have finished its deliberations and proposed solutions. There are lots of people, including Hillsborough Tax Appraiser Rob Turner, with good ideas about tax reform that the Legislature should consider.

Voters will be skeptical of whatever lawmakers produce in a short session. After all, just five months ago they cheered a complex agreement they assured us would make property taxes drop like a rock. Instead, they met with public consternation, and when a judge removed the initiative from the ballot recently because the language was confusing and misleading, lawmakers started to back away from the plan.

But the so-called super exemption, which would have given voters the choice of keeping the existing Save our Homes cap or switching to a super exemption that would have sheltered up to $195,000 of a home's taxable value without capping annual increases. That reform would have provided more relief to new homeowners than will the latest plan.

Lawmakers' reaction - backing away from the super exemption while allowing an appeal to move forward - suggests they never really believed in it to begin with. So why should we think they have any faith in their new proposal?

Crist's plan would save $6.3 billion over five years, in part by doubling the $25,000 property tax exemption to $50,000, which would benefit everybody. But the plan to allow longtime homeowners to take the Save Our Homes cap with them - so-called portability - would not help those hurting the most. While portability would encourage home sales and allow those now trapped in homes because of their tax savings to sell, it would create two classes of homeowners, which raises significant legal questions.

Rubio has requested inclusions of other issues in the debate, including relief for affordable housing and businesses on 'working waterfronts.' These are the kinds of suggestions that should be vetted because business owners, as well as homeowners, deserve tax predictability.

Stampeding tax reform brings the danger of leaving the state's biggest problems untouched.

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