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Save our state

The Save Our Homes tax cap was a bad idea that resulted in gross inequities in Floridians' tax bills. But instead of fixing it, pandering lawmakers want to make it portable, bringing less tax revenue in to Tallahassee.

Not many people cheerfully pay taxes, but roads would crumble and police would lose their jobs without them. So Florida lawmakers who are engaged in an election-year bidding war on property tax breaks may as well level with the people they serve. This is Pandering with a capital P.

The tax break property owners already enjoy, called Save Our Homes, was itself a con. Voters were told in 1992 that rising property values were leading to tax bills that forced poor, elderly widows out of their homes. The solution, to limit annual assessment increases to no more than 3 percent as long as people remained in the same home, may have helped some widows. But it also shifted the tax burden from multimillion-dollar mansions to the rest of us. Median-priced homes now save about $800 a year, as compared to $13,700 for million-dollar-plus homes.

That's not the worst of it. The Save Our Homes scheme has so skewed the way properties are taxed that next-door neighbors can pay starkly different taxes. As a Times computer analysis of 722,358 properties in west-central Florida demonstrates, the tax bill often depends on how long the house has been owned. For two side-by-side homes in South Tampa, built in 1963 and identical in size, the current tax bills tell the story of gross inequity. One pays $700 in taxes, and the other $3,196.

Rather than fix the inequity, though, lawmakers could ask voters to make it worse. Save Our Homes is working so well that some homeowners don't want to move. So some lawmakers want to let them buy a new house and take the tax break with them. This so-called "portable" tax gift doesn't begin to pass the political smell test:

1) The elderly widow is being invoked again, this time because she is supposedly trapped in her home for fear of higher property taxes even if she moves to a smaller home. Yet the tax break is being offered, again, without regard to ability to pay. So wealthy widows, or wealthy homeowners, would reap the benefit.

2) Given that new homes and condo towers often sell out prior to construction, prospective buyers apparently are not deterred by paying a full property tax. So where's the evidence of economic hardship? Is this merely tax avoidance lawmakers are trying to promote?

If lawmakers truly were concerned about elderly widows on fixed incomes, they would fashion a constitutional amendment targeted only at them. But that's not the real agenda, which is why the proposals include one to let property owners pass along the break to their children and one to let businesses get the same treatment.

In a state with no income tax and a national ranking of 44th in overall taxation, the property tax is an exception to the rule. Property owners, according to a new Florida TaxWatch report, pay slightly more than the national average and rank 20th in their tax burden. That's why it is even more important that homes and businesses are fairly assessed so that those taxes are fairly distributed. If the latest Save Our Homes plan is passed, though, the state might as well abolish property appraisal offices and just let owners set their own assessments. Why go through the pretense of being fair?

[Last modified March 31, 2006, 01:08:15]