Eliminating property tax goes far beyond any trims realized by addressing the proverbial waste, fraud and abuse. It most likely means raising another tax to make up for the lost revenue.
Gov. Ron DeSantis holds immigration press event in Palm Beach County
Gov. Ron DeSantis holds immigration Palm Beach County press event with Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, State Rep. Mike Caruso and FDLE Commissioner Mark Glass
Gov. Ron DeSantis has started talking about eliminating property taxes for Florida homeowners.
I don’t think he really means it. For starters, it would make Florida the only state that doesn’t have a property tax.
And if enacted, it would knock a significant hole in Florida’s budget, which requires some new or expanded tax to replace it — and he’s not talking about that.
So, I would just chalk this up to empty political posturing. Again.
Still, it’s fun listening to him marvel about the property tax, as if it were some new evil deep-state plot he just discovered and is angry about its implementation.
“Is it your property or not? Just for being on your property year after year, you’ve got to write a check to the government every year,” he said last week. “So you’re basically paying rent to the government to live on your own property.”
Oh, the outrage of it all! He was working himself up to a solid 9 on the Fake Rancor Scale.
DeSantis is leaving out the part that your property has a neighborhood public school nearby that allows all the children there an education. And that if you call “911” from your property, you get a police car, ambulance or fire truck there within minutes to respond to your individual emergency.
Or that your property has a public library nearby for your use and a sewer system that keeps your property from being flooded and treated water at the taps on your property and nearby maintained parks where you and your neighbors can play and garbage trucks dedicated to making sure you don’t have to let all your waste rot there on your property and attract vermin.
Why is DeSantis suddenly interested in property tax?
I think DeSantis must be talking about home sites during some imaginary frontier days. Yes, the pretended confusion is deep.
It also includes him pretending that it’s preposterous to even assess how much your property is worth for tax purposes.
“The reality is you don’t really know how much your home is worth until someone offers you money and is willing to pull the trigger on a sale. That’s how a market works,” DeSantis said. “You can say it’s worth this much, but if no one is willing to offer you that much, why should you pay taxes on that amount?”
So, the tax is zero until you sell it?
Arriving at the elimination of property taxes has been quite a delayed epiphany for DeSantis. After all, he spent a lengthy 12-year dormant phase — six years in the U.S. Congress, and another six years as governor — without calling for the abolition of the property tax.
And now, we’re led to believe it’s suddenly up near the top of his to-do list.
Like I said, I don’t believe it. Also, the numbers don’t add up.
State lawmakers have already nibbled at the fringes of property taxes in Florida. The Florida Save Our Homes assessment limitation caps yearly increases of property taxes, and is one of nearly a dozen tax breaks already enacted.
Getting rid of property taxes would create a $43 billion hole in the state budget, which works out to $2,015 per person, the Florida Policy Institute calculated.
The property tax levied on homeowners bolsters the budgets of cities and counties, by nearly 30%, and accounts for about half of the money for local schools.
Eliminating that revenue source goes far beyond any trims realized by addressing the proverbial waste, fraud and abuse. It most likely means raising another tax to make up for the lost revenue.
Eliminating property tax will have many ripple effects
And Florida’s options are limited. There’s no state income tax to tap. And lawmakers killed the so-called intangible tax in 2006, a tax on stocks and bonds that could have raised a couple billion dollars per year.
That leaves the state sales tax, which is at 6% now.
“If policymakers were to eliminate property taxes and replace them with higher consumption taxes (i.e., sales taxes), they would have to double the state’s general sales tax rate,” the Florida Policy Institute found.
The institute said that doubling the state’s sales tax to 12% — which would make Florida’s sales tax the highest in the nation — would raise about $40 billion, which is still short, but near the hole created by the loss of property taxes.
It would also be a highly regressive tax, affecting disproportionately Floridians with low to moderate incomes.
And Florida already has the dubious distinction of being the most regressive tax structure in the nation due to its reliance on excise taxes on gasoline, alcohol and tobacco rather than income tax, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
DeSantis has already said he wouldn’t support raising the state’s sales tax rate to pay for the loss of income from the elimination of property tax.
“Well, I’m pretty sure the Legislature would not raise the sales tax and I’m quite certain I’d veto any increase,” he posted on social media.
Well in that case, I’m pretty sure that all this talk about ending property taxes without credible and sufficient offsets for the lost revenue is the legislative equivalent of candy for dinner.
Nothing to see here, folks. Just more political theater.
Frank Cerabino is a news columnist with The Palm Beach Post, which is part of the USA Today Network-Florida. He can be reached at fcerabino@gannett.com.