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Hillsborough's tax exemption for seniors amounted to only $620,000, well below the $4-million estimate. Still, few other local governments have passed it.
By DAVID KARP
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 5, 2000
TAMPA -- One by one, as the deadline approached last year to pass a new tax break for senior citizens, county commissioners and city council members across the Tampa Bay area took a pass.
And one by one, officials in Pinellas, Pasco, Hernando and Citrus counties decided the new property tax exemption would cost government too much.
Only Hillsborough County embraced the new tax break -- and prepared to lose $4-million from its budget this year. The state estimated an even higher loss -- $5-million.
It didn't happen.
In its first year, the county lost only $620,000 when 5,167 senior citizens received the property tax exemption, according to Hillsborough Property Appraiser Rob Turner.
"The impact on county programs is marginal," said Assistant County Administrator Ed Hunzeker, who oversees the county's finances, "and that would be over the long run."
Half as many people as expected applied for the tax break. Property owners over 65 who live on an annual household income under $20,000 qualify for the tax break on their homesteads.
No one knows why so few people applied. Government officials might have simply estimated wrong, said Property Appraiser Rob Turner.
His office mailed about 12,000 applications, but only half of them were returned. About 85 percent of the 6,067 seniors who applied for the tax break got it.
The 900 people who were rejected did not provide proper documentation, required by law, proving their annual household income.
As more people learn about the tax break, though, the impact to the county's coffers will increase, officials said, although no one knows by how much.
"It's going to grow," said Chief Deputy Property Appraiser Warren Weathers.
Hillsborough phased in the tax break over three years so the impact would not be felt all at once.
Commissioners began with a $15,000 tax break, with plans to increase the exemption to $20,000 next year, and to the maximum $25,000 in 2002.
In the third year, the property appraiser would start knocking $25,000 off the value of a house when calculating someone's property taxes. The break is on top of the traditional $25,000 homestead exemption.
For the average homeowner, the eventual tax savings comes to about $195 a year.
"That is a meaningful savings for those people on a limited income," Turner said.
The tax break meant a lot to Marguerite J. Aboud, 81 today, who has lived in the same wood-framed home in Tampa Heights since 1955.
"You work hard all your life," said Aboud, who was an accountant at Tampa's Exchange Bank and an X-ray technician at the old St. Joseph's Hospital in Ybor City. "And you are going to need some security."
Aboud lives a modest life surrounded by prized possessions like her antique china cabinet and black-and-white photographs from her youth. She drives the same white Camaro she got in 1987, which has 40,000 miles on it.
"The elderly that have a small income and are barely making it -- it's costing them," she said. "It's hurt them."
Aboud paid about $120 in property taxes last year. The tax break means she won't pay any property taxes for her house, which is valued for tax purposes at $30,591.
Aboud wants other counties and cities to follow Hillsborough's example. So, 20 of Florida's 67 counties, as well as 50 cities, have passed some version of the tax break, although few are in the Tampa Bay area are among the list.
Pinellas County Administrator Fred Marquis said he does not plan to take the issue before the county commission again. Pinellas commissioners declined to pass the tax break earlier this year.
Pinellas officials estimated the tax break would cost Pinellas about $8-million a year. "We have a much, much higher percentage of retirees" than Hillsborough, Marquis said.
The only other government in the Tampa Bay area that passed the tax break was St. Pete Beach, but it does not go into effect until next year.
The town of North Redington Beach passed the senior tax break effective when -- and if -- the Pinellas County Commission passes the exemption.
- Times Staff Writer David Karp can be reached at (813) 226-3376 or karp@sptimes.com