The anti-tax amendment (HJR 1-F),<\/a> sloppily approved just two days after Gov. Ron DeSantis dumped it on their desks, deserves defeat for many reasons, which will air in great detail before voting begins.<\/p>\nThe process itself \u2014 done in haste amid stupefying ignorance \u2014 is reason enough for any responsible citizen to vote \u201cno\u201d and to hold its perpetrators accountable.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers did not seem to care how a much larger homestead exemption for homeowners would hurt the roughly one-third of residents who must rent. Many are unable to afford a home, and their landlords will necessarily pass along their higher tax bills, as they do now.<\/p>\n
The core of Amendment 3 would exempt up to $150,000 of a home\u2019s taxable value from non-school property taxes next year and up to $250,000 in years following.<\/p>\n
Florida\u2019s exemption is already generous \u2014 $25,000 off the taxable assessment for all owner-occupied homes and up to $26,411 more (against non-school taxes only) against a higher portion of value.<\/p>\n
A grave threat to small businesses<\/p>\n
Legislators did not seem to care how small businesses would cope with a shifted tax burden in a persistently inflationary economy.<\/p>\n
Nor do they seem to care how local governments will pay for libraries, parks, public health and other amenities under a provision limiting use of property tax revenue to public safety, education, infrastructure and a few more core functions. Even if billions in local tax revenue disappear, local needs will remain.<\/p>\n
They did not seem to care how cities and counties could support police, fire and other emergency services on a sharply reduced tax base, or about those local governments that can\u2019t raise tax rates under existing constitutional ceilings.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Revenue Estimating Conference has not reviewed the proposed amendment,\u201d said a pitifully superficial Senate staff analysis that acknowledged \u201ca negative indeterminate impact.\u201d Translation: Many billions.<\/p>\n
The Legislature amended DeSantis\u2019 scheme to exempt schools, but that only made a deplorable idea marginally less terrible.<\/p>\n
There is no reason, other than his ambition to run for president again, for the lame-duck governor to promote such a radical idea and give the Legislature so little time to consider it.<\/p>\n
Even Florida TaxWatch, a group often reluctant to attack the status quo, criticized the extreme haste and argued that this question should be left to a Taxation and Budget Reform Commission to be appointed next year under a constitutional provision.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hurried evaluation and adoption of this proposal, which became public less than a week ago, is unnecessary,\u201d TaxWatch said.<\/p>\n
A history of bad tax ideas<\/p>\n
It wouldn\u2019t be the first time Florida crippled its revenue sources for suspicious motives.<\/p>\n
The 1924 amendment that still prohibits a personal income tax was promoted secretly by the Florida Bankers Association and openly by Gov. Cary Hardee, a banker himself, to attract wealthy people to Florida. The state\u2019s hyperinflated real estate market collapsed a year later.<\/p>\n
The first homestead exemption, at $5,000, erased much of the local tax base. As intended, it left Florida broke and led to the first sales tax in 1949, proposed and signed by Gov. Fuller Warren, who had promised voters to veto any such thing.<\/p>\n
Power, not money<\/p>\n
The overarching impulse is the contempt that DeSantis and his collaborators bear toward local government. Former Republican Sen. Jeff Brandes of St. Petersburg hit it on the head in a column<\/a> for the Florida Trident.<\/p>\n\u201cPower, not taxes, is what this debate is really about,\u201d Brandes wrote. \u201cFlorida is debating a fundamental redesign of how local government is financed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under what\u2019s proposed, he warned, local officials will have to go to Tallahassee \u201cto keep deputies on patrol, firefighters in stations, and ambulances on the road.\u201d<\/p>\n
The irony, he said, \u201cshould give conservatives pause. A proposal intended to shrink government could ultimately centralize it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The governor becomes everyone\u2019s mayor.<\/p>\n
And an arrogant Legislature that couldn\u2019t spare more than two days to think such a major change through becomes everyone\u2019s remote city council.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The drastic demolition of cities and counties sought by the Legislature is the most irresponsible enactment by Tallahassee…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[126410,126411,126413,126412,232,234,233],"class_list":["post-300983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-editorial-opinion","tag-published-opinion","tag-structured-content","tag-structured-life-and-society-content","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}