Slashing property taxes is politically tempting, but it poses practical problems, the News Service of Florida columnist writes
There is probably nothing any officeholder likes more in an election year than a chance to cut taxes, a treat that will tempt Florida lawmakers in their 2026 legislative session.
Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republicans have been promoting the idea of doing away with property taxes for homeowners, or at least severely lowering them. It’s still in the talking and costing-out stage, and anything they come up with would have to go on next year’s ballot, but what politician wouldn’t want to share that ballot beside a major tax cut?
Nobody likes taxes, and a levy on your house is especially distasteful. Millage caps and added exemptions come up from time to time, always framed as long-overdue relief for poor widows and worthy veterans.
Republicans going back to Marco Rubio, when he was House speaker from 2006 to 2008, have persuasively argued that you never really own your home if you have to pay the local government every year. Rubio proposed reducing property taxes to their 2001 levels — a five-year rollback at the time — but all he wound up with was an increase in the homestead exemption. Instead of just exempting the first $25,000 in value of a home, the portion valued between $50,000 and $75,000 also was made exempt.
Not bad. But Florida is not a high-tax state, regardless of what legislative candidates will tell you.
Strategically tempting though it may be, abolishing property taxes poses a pair of practical problems.
First, local governments need to provide public schools, police and fire services and roads, just to name some big-ticket stuff. Another source of money — probably the sales tax — would have to be raised to replace the revenue.
Second, that’s regressive. The more luxurious your home, the higher your property taxes — generally speaking — and the more humble your abode, the less you pay. There are exceptions and anomalies, but the working family is normally going to pay less than the retiree with a Mercedes in the driveway.
The trouble is, the sales tax bears no relation to your ability to pay.
There’s also a logical flaw in the professed GOP belief that you never truly own your home if you have to pay taxes on it. It’s not a penalty. You’re paying to maintain cops on the beat, libraries for everybody, to fix potholes. You don’t want to support schools because you have no children in them? Well, don’t you want to live in an educated community?
The governor says Florida has one unique advantage in junking the levy. “When you talk about the property tax, we’re probably the only state in the country that could pull it off,” DeSantis recently said, pointing to snowbirds who pay taxes on non-homesteaded properties.
“You have wealthy people who stay here three months a year. I’d rather Floridians pay less, and they pay the taxes — why would we not want to look out for our own?” he said.
Best of all, those snowbirds don’t vote in Florida — so tax ‘em. But it’s doubtful there are enough wealthy Yankees wintering down here to offset our property taxes, or a major chunk of it.
The Florida Policy Institute, an Orlando-based organization, delved into preliminary data from the Department of Revenue and estimated that untaxing homesteaded properties would lead to counties and school districts losing about $7.8 billion each and cities having to replace some $3 billion.
The Tallahassee-based Florida TaxWatch made a similar projection based on last year’s local taxes.
Meanwhile, state Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia has been spotlighting what he considers waste and reckless spending by local governments — sort of a state-level Department Of Government Efficiency operation like the one Elon Musk ran in Washington. Ingoglia, who happens to be up for election next year, and DeSantis, who appointed him to the Cabinet job, have dubbed this effort the “Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight” or FAFO — an acronym with a coy meaning in social media.
It’s all so tempting, so much fun, this waging war on taxes. Offer me a tax cut and you’ve got my attention and, once you’ve got my attention, my vote follows.
In an election year, that’s a can’t-miss proposition.
Bill Cotterell is a retired Capitol reporter for United Press International and the Tallahassee Democrat. He can be reached at wrcott43@aol.com.
