Don't ask what's in it; just say it's good
By HOWARD TROXLER
Published October 16, 2007
TALLAHASSEE
If our Legislature ran a restaurant, it wouldn't have any separate courses or side dishes.
Everything would be thrown into one big stew pot. The menu would list a single item: "Food."
Likewise, the menu that the Legislature is cooking up this week for Florida voters to consider in January has a single label: "Property tax cut."
But there are a lot of, uh, interesting ingredients in there. Some of them are easily recognized. Some are more like the mystery stew you get at a roadside restaurant.
The natural first question all of us have about what the Legislature is doing this week is: How does it affect me?
It affects homeowners the most. If voters agree, all homeowners will get a bigger homestead exemption - $50,000 total, instead of $25,000 as now.
It helps people who feel trapped in their homes by Florida's existing Save Our Homes tax cap. They could move their tax break to a new home, instead of losing it.
And first-time home buyers would get an extra tax break, too, worth up to 25 percent of the value of their home. (There's a formula in there that could make it less, but that's the gist of it.)
What about nonhomeowners? This week's deal doesn't help them as much. There's a tax break for the first $25,000 of "tangible personal property," which helps businesses a little. And there's an overall cap on local tax increases.
You could argue, as lots of folks do, that this week's deal is not enough of a tax cut.
After all, it's smaller than the super homestead exemption that was supposed to be on the Jan. 29 ballot. That tax break would have been up to $195,000, instead of $50,000. But a court has thrown that out.
Neither does this week's deal solve the underlying unfairness of Florida's tax structure. In some ways it makes it worse. But the message coming from the leaders of the Legislature is that this is a first step, we'll do more later.
Not to be a poopy-pants, but let's raise other side issues:
-The part about having a "portable" tax cap might be unconstitutional, according to the Legislature's own staff.
-There's a paragraph in there that makes it clear that the Legislature can limit local property taxes. Local governments are calling this the end of "home rule" in Florida. This is a huge philosophical change that's kind of lost in the mix.
-Creating a new tax break for first-time home buyers also creates more inequality and opens the door to fraud and enforcement problems.
-There's stuff in the bill about nonprofit corporations getting a tax break for "workplace" and affordable housing. Who can form these companies? How big are the breaks?
-There's more vague language about a tax break for "working waterfront" business. As for the details - they'll figure that out later.
As of 2 p.m. Monday, by the time the first council in the House had approved all these measures unanimously, the actual words that would appear on the statewide ballot still had not been written.
Details, details.
* * *
Got a question or a comment about the property tax special session? Join me online from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. today for a special-edition live chat on TroxBlog.
To get to TroxBlog, click on the "Blogs" link at www.tampabay.com.