‘The governor has not yet come forward with any specific answers,’ House Speaker Perez said. ‘If the House wanted to get this done, they would have,’ a DeSantis spokesman shot back.
House Speaker Danny Perez delivers a stunning rebuke to DeSantis
The Florida Legislature nixed the governor’s special session and created their own, solely focused on immigration.
- Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez announced a select committee to review property tax cut proposals.
- The move follows disagreements with Governor DeSantis on property tax cuts and other issues.
- The committee will consider various options, including raising homestead exemptions and changing assessment caps.
A group of House members will review and propose plans to cut property taxes next year, House Speaker Daniel Perez said April 29.
Perez, R-Miami, said he’s setting up a select committee to study the potential impact of four different plans for reducing or keeping property taxes low.
The move comes amid a clash between Perez and Gov. Ron DeSantis on a range of issues, including cutting property taxes.
In his remarks, Perez chided DeSantis for floating the idea of eliminating property taxes entirely – but not submitting a detailed plan to do so, or to make up the revenue for local governments that rely on the more than $50 billion in revenue for vital services.
“If property taxes go away, how would local governments pay for the services we expect local government to provide, like police, fire and infrastructure?” Perez said. “Unfortunately, as the weeks have gone by, the governor has not yet come forward with any specific answers to those questions or with a specific plan or with actual bill language.”
Talk of tax-cutting underlies much of session this year
DeSantis has in recent months bemoaned what he sees as the unfairness of property taxes, saying the need to pay annual property taxes was akin to borrowing the property from the government instead of owning it outright.
He said he’d like to eliminate them entirely, but in lieu of that has called on lawmakers to put a state constitutional amendment on the 2026 ballot to drastically cut property taxes, including for residential homeowners.
DeSantis also laid out a plan to reduce property taxes this year without the need for a ballot measure by backfilling the revenue from the portion of property taxes that goes toward public schools while eliminating that piece of the tax for owners of homes with a homestead exemption. DeSantis said it would save owners on average $1,000.
But that plan wasn’t included in either the House or Senate budget.
DeSantis “is also committed to working with the Legislature to get this done this session,” DeSantis spokesman Bryan Griffin posted on X. “If the House had wanted to get this done, they would have.”
Lawmakers also haven’t advanced measures for the 2026 ballot to dramatically reduce property taxes, and the regular legislative session is set to end May 2. Instead, House and Senate budget negotiators are deadlocked over how much to cut taxes. The crux of the dispute is over sales tax cuts.
Perez wants an overall reduction in the sales tax, from 6% to 5.25%. Senate President Ben Albritton, R-Wauchula, is concerned such a large cut, which would cost about $5 billion in revenue each year, would leave the state unable to pay for education, health care and other services as the state continues to grow.
Albritton says he prefers to eliminate sales taxes on clothing items under $75.
Ideas include increasing homestead exemption
The House and Senate haven’t entered into formal budget negotiations, meaning the 60-day session will need to go into overtime to resolve the differences in the spending plans.
The House select committee will be lead by Reps. Toby Overdorf, R-Palm City, and Vicki Lopez, R-Miami; Perez hasn’t named the rest of the panel.
Perez laid out five possible avenues for property tax changes:
- Requiring all local governments to hold referendums on eliminating homestead property taxes.
- Raising the homestead property tax exemption from $50,000 to $500,000 for non-school taxes, with a $1 million exemption for homestead owners over 65 who have had a homestead in Florida for 30 years.
- Allowing the Legislature to raise the homestead exemption by law instead of needing a constitutional amendment.
- Hardening existing caps on annual increases in assessments by making the 3% cap for homestead properties apply every three years and by raising the 10% cap for non-homestead properties to 15% per year.
- Banning the government from foreclosing on a homestead property for unpaid taxes.
“These proposals … are intended to be a spring board for the committee’s work,” Perez said. “They are a starting point – not an end goal.”
Gray Rohrer is a reporter with the USA TODAY Network-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at grohrer@gannett.com. Follow him on X: @GrayRohrer.