The Florida House of Representatives has hatched a batch of property tax cuts for homeowners that are a phenomenal exercise in irresponsibility.
The seven — yes, seven — constitutional amendments blessed by Speaker Daniel Perez would hack away seriously, some more than others, at the most significant revenue source for Florida’s cities and counties. Even the least drastic ones would leave local government worse off.
The plan is wrong in concept, timing and in conspicuously absent details.
To cut homeowners’ taxes yet again discriminates further against people who rent their homes or places of businesses.
Taxes on homesteads yield 34% of county tax levies statewide and 39% of municipal tax collections, according to data from the Department of Revenue.
The money saved for eligible homesteaders would likely come at the expense of all other property owners — and the tenants to whom they would pass the buck.
Counties, districts and cities already at or near their constitutional taxing limits would have enormous problems.
All the measures exempt the schools.
None of them provides for any replacement funds from Tallahassee. The Legislature might address that deliberate oversight with severe increases in Florida’s regressive sales tax, which averages just over 7% counting optional local levies.
Perez plans to put all the proposals on the November 2026 ballot, despite their conflicting terms, for the voters to choose “some, all or none.” Left unclear is what the Legislature would do if the voters ratify more than one of the seven.
The scheme requires counties and cities to maintain existing spending on law enforcement. Voters aren’t supposed to wonder what would happen to their fire and health departments, sanitation, parks, infrastructure and other indispensable local services.
Some of the amendments would boost the existing homestead exemption, which waives homeowners’ taxes on the first $25,000 of their value and from $50,000 to $75,000 on the value that cities, counties and special districts can tax.
House Joint Resolution 201 would eliminate all non-school homestead taxes. HJR 203 would phase them out over 10 years. HJR 207 sets a 25% exemption.
HJR 205 would exempt everyone 65 and older, including President Trump and most of his neighbors, from paying anything but school taxes on their palatial homes. (Seniors with little income already receive an additional $50,000 exemption on these taxes.)
HJR 209 is an additional $100,000 exemption for owners who maintain comprehensive property insurance coverage. HJR 211 allows homeowners to take their existing “save our homes” assessment limitation to a new home even if it costs less than the old one. HJR 2013 would limit assessment increases to 3% over three years rather than the present one year.
House Bill 215 would require a two-thirds vote for any county, city, district or school board to raise tax rates. There would be no referendum.
Previous constitutional amendments to cut taxes have always come with the necessary implementing legislation. Voters this time would be buying a pig — or pigs — in a poke, trusting the Legislature to fill in the blanks.
Sen. Tina Polsky, D-Boca Raton, urged Broward County commissioners the other day to say which of the proposals they prefer — meaning those they might find least objectionable.
“We’re going to have to do something,” she said. “There is clearly a mandate from on high.”
Any such mandate, which originates with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 2028 presidential ambitions, ought not goad Polsky and other Democrats into voting badly for Florida. Although there aren’t enough of them to overcome the Republican supermajorities, principled opposition could expose the flaws and frame the debate for a November referendum.
It’s all particularly untimely because the Constitution already provides for a Tax and Budget Reform Commission to be appointed every 20 years to consider the tax structure without the myriad distractions — and horse-trading opportunities — of a legislative session. The next commission is due in 2027.
The right vote for every legislator, Republicans as well as Democrats, would be to shelve the Perez package and not preempt the commission, especially when it is just two years away.
The saddest thing about the Perez plan is that it would make the nation’s worst tax structure even worse. Property taxes seem to irk people more than the sales tax does, but in the absence of a personal income tax, they’re the only major Florida revenue source that bears any relationship to wealth.
ITEP — the nonprofit Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy — says Florida has the nation’s most regressive tax structure. Overall, Florida’s poorest people pay nearly five times the rate that the richest do. Even the property tax is regressive, but not by as much as sales tax. That’s partly because rented homes do not qualify for the homestead exemption. None of the House measures changes that.
If state government wants to end the property taxes local governments rely on, it must offer a solution to make up the catastrophic shortfall. The fairest and most effective way would repeal the personal income tax ban, which was adopted by a handful of voters 101 years ago, and direct revenue from that source to the schools. The quality of a child’s education shouldn’t depend even slightly on the vagaries of property value.
But this is Florida, where common sense goes to die.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
