Activists for Fair Florida Real Estate Taxes

“Same Value – Same Taxes”

ACTFFRET’s Florida Property Tax Reform Proposals

Guiding Principles

Control Government Spending – We hear a lot about “accountability.” ACTFFRET believes that effective control over government spending comes when the entire electorate is held accountable for putting spendthrifts in office.  Citizen control of spending is a direct result of fair and equal taxation where everybody “shares the pain” and all have an incentive to monitor spending.

Create Equality - ACTFFRET believes that fairness demands that properties of equal value should pay the same real estate taxes. Thus, our tax reform preferences are to eliminate or equalize Florida’s Homestead and Save Our Homes tax exemptions which have produced enormous inequalities based on date of purchase and citizenship.

Hoping for the elimination of the Homestead and Save Our Homes exemptions is probably a not practical option. However, nearly equalizing their benefits can be achieved by:

1. Rolling back the assessments on all Florida homes to 2001 pre-real-estate-bubble levels.

2.  Extending the SOH caps to all properties, updated to 2007, by increasing the 2001 assessments at the “official” rates applied under SOH.  For 6 years, that would allow for about a 15-20% assessment increase on those properties.

3.  Eliminate the Homestead exemption on newly-purchased or transferred properties.

Avoid Causing Personal Hardship - Save Our Homes was touted as preventing the “needy” from losing their homes to high taxes. Instead, the largest beneficiaries have been those who need such protection the least and are saving hundreds of thousands of dollars.  This is the simplest fix of all.  Allow those who demonstrate hardship to defer taxes that are beyond their current means until they sell their property.

Maintain Necessary Government Revenues - Offset any revenue losses from the foregoing with the smallest sales tax increase justifiable under controlled government spending.