Families shoulder less tax burden

Owners of businesses, investment properties and second homes have been hit hardest.

By ALEX LEARY, Times Staff Writer
Published January 21, 2008

In TV ads, mailers and campaign stops across the state, Gov. Charlie Crist is selling the property tax cut plan on the Jan. 29 ballot as desperately needed relief for Florida's families.

"Did you know that over the last six years, property taxes in Florida have doubled?" asks one flier. "Florida families work too hard to have their money taken away at such an astronomical rate."

It's a strategy that tugs at the emotional tax debate and may be the governor's best hope at achieving the 60 percent approval rating to pass Amendment 1.

But if Crist truly wanted to address the outcry, he would appeal to business owners and people with investment property and second homes.

They - not families with homestead protection - have been hit hardest by soaring property taxes. The proposal on the ballot, however, is a product of political compromise by Florida lawmakers. It directs most of the relief toward homeowners.

The governor is right on one point: Property levies have doubled over the past six years. In 2000, $15-billion were collected. In 2006, $30-billion.

But the majority of families that will be helped directly by Amendment 1 - those that own their homes - haven't had their wallets robbed by property taxes.

About 63 percent of Florida's homesteaded homeowners have been in their houses for a minimum of eight years, according to a November poll conducted for the St. Petersburg Times. That's long before the most recent runup in values and before the period Crist cites.

In Pinellas County, 66 percent of people have been in their homes during the six years Crist cites. The number is smaller in high-growth Pasco, about 43 percent, but in Miami-Dade, which has experienced some of the steepest value increases, it is 53 percent. Orlando's Orange County, also a high-growth place, is at 55 percent.

Why aren't homeowners feeling the pinch? The answer is Save Our Homes, the 3 percent annual cap on assessment increases on homesteaded property.

The measure has shielded homeowners individually - and as a sector - from "astronomically" higher taxes.

"Not everybody is having heart failure," said Allan Bense, former speaker of the Florida House and now chairman of a state panel that will place its own tax plans on the November ballot.

"Once we get past the premise everyone is mad about property taxes, because they're not," there might be real reform, he said.

Even at the maximum increase rate, assuming a home's taxable value grew 3 percent each year, such homeowners would have seen their taxes grow about 16 percent, not 100 percent, in the past six years.

And a sizable number - 1.3-million, or roughly 30 percent of all Florida homesteaded homeowners - are paying dramatically less taxes than their neighbors, according to state economists.

They are the individuals who have been in their homes since Save Our Homes started in 1995 and have reaped the benefits of 13 years of the assessment cap.

That includes the owner of a home in Miami that Crist visited Wednesday on a statewide promotional tour. Though the home has a market value of $229,000, it is assessed for $82,628 because of Save Our Homes.

The tax bill in 2007: $1,070.

Indeed some Florida homeowners - those who recently traded their homes for a new one or who bought their first home in Florida - do pay dramatically higher taxes due to the runup in property values.

The November Times poll showed 10 percent of Florida homeowners had purchased their house in the past three years, meaning they would have locked in their homestead at close to the market's high values.

But they are not the majority of homeowners.

And overall, homeowners' share of the state's property tax burden has slightly decreased over six years, from 34 percent to 32 percent, according to data from the state Office of Economic and Demographic Research.

If anything is astronomical, it is how much Save Our Homes has protected.

In 2007, it kept $433-billion in property value from taxation.

If Save Our Homes did not exist, homestead property owners would pay the greatest portion of property taxes, about 46 percent.

Snowbirds and investment property owners would pay 28 percent and commercial owners 26 percent. Instead, those two groups combined now pay 68 percent of the taxes.

The selling of the property tax measure, in fact its very design, is a political calculation.

While it was snowbirds and business owners who launched the cry for property tax relief in 2006 because they had seen years of double-digit property value increases, it was homesteaded homeowners whom lawmakers eventually sought to help.

As for Crist, he stands by his statement. "I guess it's in the eye of the beholder. Astronomical is a word that probably is subject to some interpretation and definition. But it certainly has been a lot, and it's a burden to the people of Florida."

Times capital bureau chief Steve Bousquet contributed to this report.

Fast facts

Phone poll results

Just 45 percent of likely Florida voters support a tax-relief amendment being pushed by Gov. Charlie Crist, according to a South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Florida Times-Union poll released Sunday. State constitutional amendments require 60 percent approval. The poll found that 34 percent said they likely would not support the amendment and the remaining 21 percent said they were undecided.

The phone poll of 500 likely voters was conducted by Maryland-based Research 2000 from Jan. 14 to Wednesday. It has a margin of error of 4.5 percent.

Associated Press

[Last modified January 21, 2008, 00:07:38]