In his State of the State address on March 4, 2025, Florida Governor DeSantis made this statement:
"While Florida property values have surged in recent years, this has come at a cost to taxpayer squeezed by increasing local government property taxes. ... Taxpayers need relief. You buy a home, pay off a mortgage - and yet you still have to write a check to the government every year just to live in your own property?"
Perhaps he was more focused on increasing tax collections leading to more government spending rather than making an adjustment to reduce tax collections to match government spending needs.
But questioning why a homeowner should continue to pay taxes to the government after paying off their mortgage is odd and certainly doesn't help improve tax literacy. Note that he didn't say that people who can afford to buy a home without a need for a mortgage should always be exempt from property taxes, which would seem to be the logical statement if property taxes are only paid by mortgagees.
Property taxes are paid, like other taxes, to fund government services and homeowners use a lot of them - streets, road maintenance, a judicial system, a school system, police and fire protection, sanitation services and likely even more.
Florida does not impose an income tax so it needs to rely on its property tax to cover more government services than states that have more tax bases.
The Wall Street Journal (3/20/25) and other papers reported that Florida is considering eliminating the property tax because home prices have increased. I'm quoted in a Newsweek article (3/7/25 by Claire Dickey) on this topic (right next to a quote from Governor DeSantis). I was asked if local governments should have some control over their property taxes. I said yes! There may be situations where a homeowner has lost a job or can't work due to illness and risks losing their home because they can't temporarily pay their property taxes. A local government should be allowed to have a system to help these homeowners.
And like many states did following the passage of Prop 13 in California in the 1970s, a state can modify the property tax base to have a cap on how much it can appreciate each year so if there is significant market increase, property taxes don't rise to the point where many homeowners can't afford to pay them (and along with that also could not afford to buy their home at today's value).
Given the close connection between the property tax which is usually a local tax and the numerous local government benefits taxpayers get, the property tax should stay. And it is one of the simpler taxes. But relief should be considered if property values are leading to tax increases (generally property tax is based on the current FMV) that many cannot afford. And, my suggestion for any Prop 13 relief measure is to modify it so that people with the highest value homes and most recent acquisitions get a higher annual revaluation because otherwise, Prop 13 provides a much larger tax break to the higher wealth/higher income homeowners.
What do you think?
4 comments:
I think it's disingenuous for DeSantis to wonder aloud if it's 'right' that property taxes are charged every year!!! He said: “You buy a home, you buy land … and you’ve been taxed many times [on that] … Is it your property, or not? Just for being on your property, you’ve got to write a check to the government every year,” DeSantis said at a recent press conference. (Yahoo Finance.) Why fill up people's heads with this malarkey? The taxes pay for services that are needed year after year - but of course he knows this.
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