Editorial | A tax is a tax is a tax
Gov. Ron DeSantis has ramped up his effort to eliminate property taxes in the state of Florida.
His reasoning?
“Property taxes effectively require homeowners to pay rent to the government,” the governor maintains.
Of special concern, he said, is the number of older property owners with paid-for-homes who are being “crushed” by the current system of taxation.
His position is not new — it’s his second big push, not counting his bid earlier this year to rebate $1,000 to homesteaded property owners.
The effort to get an initiative on the 2026 ballot as an amendment to Florida’s Constitution isn’t exactly being embraced.
With $50 billion in tax revenue — funds for local governments, public safety, schools and more — on the table, the State House of Representatives has taken up the effort with a 37-member bipartisan committee examining the proposal.
To say DeSantis is underwhelmed by this effort would be an understatement.
“You convene a 37-person committee if you’re trying to smother it in the crib,” the governor said at a roundtable in May. “They’re trying to kill any chance of property tax relief by doing this committee.”
The House Select Committee on Property Taxes brought out the expected deferment on Monday, releasing a 68-page graphics-laden look at property taxes and education funding — various comparisons, histories and how-tos on Florida’s property taxes, its Homestead exemptions, property tax millage, taxing authorities and more.
A couple of things.
Gov. DeSantis’s proposal, should at least 60% of Florida voters approve it next year, would not be a $50 billion boon to property owners’ pocketbooks. According to the Florida Policy Institute, some other form of tax — likely a sales tax as high as 12% — would be needed to provide the $43 billion minimum required to fund various essential government services. The institute put that at $2,015 per Floridian, in its report entitled “A Risky Proposition: Weakening Local Governments by Eliminating Property Tax Revenue,” issued in February.
“In Florida, eliminating property taxes would not only erode local fiscal autonomy — it would also exacerbate the state’s reliance on sales taxes, which disproportionately overburden families and workers with low to moderate income,” the findings state.
So there’s that.
But there’s more, a lot more as the issue pertains to “property taxes.”
For many of us, the “property tax” portion of our tax bill is the tip of the tax iceberg.
Fees, assessments, district levies and more lie beneath the annual millage rate debate as non-ad valorem assessments.
Non-ad valorem assessments — taxes on real property, but not technically property taxes — have become a significant and often additional revenue source for local governments.
Some of these non-ad valorem levies, for example trash collection fees to pay third party-vendors, simply pay for outside services provided.
Others, though, pay for services once covered by property taxes before the state legislature created carve outs, one example being the “re-capture” for fire protection expenditures after the real estate collapse wreaked havoc on funding for special districts. Municipal agencies, including the Cape Coral Fire Department, then piggy-backed in with the new funds supplementing general fund budgets that have long since ballooned back and then some.
Unfortunately, these various and sundry “assessments” have become an end run around constitutional millage caps, Homestead protections and, for church-owned properties, taxes that aren’t exempt.
Not only that, assessments are not tied to property values and may be increased at will by taxing authorities.
Where undeveloped parcels are plentiful or valuations are low, the cumulative non-ad valorem levies can exceed the actual property tax portion of the tax bill.
Let us be clear: Call them assessments, call them what you will — A tax is a tax is a tax.
It comes out of the same pocket, the property owners’, and no discussion about property taxes can be had without addressing non-ad valorem assessments as well.
Any move to eliminate property taxes, or minimize them by raising the sales tax would be a tax shift, not a tax savings at all, unless the un-capped, exemption-less non-ad valorem component of Florida’s property tax bills are considered as part of the reform.
The last thing property owners in Florida need is our constitutional Save-Our-Homes protections and exemptions removed, leaving long-time homeowners, disabled veterans, older property owners and more vulnerable to being “assessed” out of their homes.
In fact, the governor need not wait to see if his eliminate-property-taxes initiative garners enough support to make the 2026 ballot.
The way to address the escalation in local budgets and local spending begins with a revisit of legislation and enactments that have allowed local governments to fund operations previously paid for via property taxes with additional property taxes by another name.
The worst way is another tax shuffle that gives the same coffers a limitless way to grow.
Breeze editorial