Columns

Cutting your taxes: not if, but how much

By HOWARD TROXLER
Published April 15, 2007

TALLAHASSEE - Well, it's working. The people of Florida have been especially mad about local taxes the past couple of years, and our Legislature is likely to crack down in the next few weeks.

This will affect all of us, whether we rent, whether we're saving to buy our first home, whether we've lived in the same house forever, or whether we're worried about sales taxes at the cash register.

There are two big questions and a few midsized ones.

First big question: How far will the Legislature cut back the existing tax collections of Florida's cities and counties? Everybody wants to roll back the clock to some previous year, and then put an annual cap on growth after that.

Second big question: Should we only cut property taxes, or also shift part of the burden to taxes on sales?

Notice that the question is not whether to cut, but how much. Even the cities and counties, who have plenty of people in Tallahassee watching this debate, seem resigned to some kind of rollback.

So the coming cuts are going to be the biggest, ongoing story in our public square for a long time. As you can see from the articles in today's newspaper, the locals have generally increased spending faster than either inflation or growth, simply because rising property values gave them a bigger tax base.

For the most part, that didn't mean they were buying gold-plated toilets or lighting cigars with $100 bills. They were spending our money on something that they -- and to be sure, a lot of us -- thought was reasonable.

The rival ideas of our House and Senate are complicated. But in general, the Senate wants a relatively mild rollback, to 2005-2006 levels - about a $1.1-billion cut statewide in the first year, a total of $11.5-billion over five years.

The House is more ambitious. The House has a bill to roll all the way back to 2000-2001 levels, factoring back in an annual cap on growth. That cuts $6.3-billion statewide the first year.

On the other hand, the House would replace part of the cut with a extra 1 cent on top of the existing 6-cent-per-dollar state sales tax.

And in the long run, the House has a second idea that would be an even bigger change. Local voters could decide to eliminate all property taxes and replace them with even more sales taxes.

As for the midsized questions, they include whether the Legislature will:

- Give help to first-time home buyers, an extra exemption until they have owned their house long enough.

- Phase in the "sticker shock" of higher taxes when selling one home and buying another.

- Give Florida businesses an extra break on tangible property taxes, probably a $25,000 exemption.

It may be, still, that the Legislature can't agree and has to meet again in a special session - but it seems unlikely, given the visibility of this issue, for lawmakers to do nothing.

So just like that, we have crossed a philosophical divide in Florida, and agreed that our local government must be based not on what it can spend, but what it can't. At the local level, at least, the antitax revolution born in the Reagan 1980s will be complete, and victorious.

Howard Troxler posts additional commentary, updates and reader reaction online at TroxBlog. Go to www.tampabay.com and click on the "Blogs" link.

[Last modified April 15, 2007, 00:22:10]