Replacing a tax that's old as dirt

Happy Monday! Here’s a light load to begin our week.

Actually, I’m kidding. We’re going to discuss property taxes a bit today, and there’s nothing easy about that.

Some folks have recently suggested I dive into the property tax debate. The governor wants to get rid of the property tax, and the Legislature is looking into it.

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Florida isn’t the only place this is happening. Other states are considering some form of property tax removal.

It’s the perfect issue for state lawmakers who don’t have any actual, you know, use for property taxes. They’re totally a local thing.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

I need to break it down into bite-sized pieces. Before participating in an intelligent debate about whether property taxes are a bane or boon, I gotta have perspective.
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For example, when Gov. Ron DeSantis calls property taxes an “oppressive and ineffective form of taxation,” that gets me curious. I mean…is it?

I started off my journey searching Google for “history of taxation.” I came across this 1-minute video that explained it pretty well, and here’s another one. Basically, back in the olden days, citizens paid their taxes with livestock or grain.

It was the Roman Empire that saw the correlation between taxing citizens to pay for roads, military, and aqueducts.

I’m not sure whose idea it was to tax property, but it’s been around for a few days. Florida had a statewide property tax in the 19th century, then switched to a local tax in the 1930s immediately with a $10,000 exemption for anyone over 65 or totally disabled. In 1980, voters pushed that exemption to $25,000.

It stayed that way for quite a few years. Additional exemptions were added, along with the Save Our Homes ballot initiative that caps increases of assessed value on homesteads to 3% or the cost of living, whichever is less.

So, there you have it. We have property tax because it’s been that way for centuries. If it’s an “oppressive and ineffective form of taxation,” as the governor claims, someone would have ditched it long ago.

Local governments realize that property taxes are both unpopular and unsustainable in an economy like ours that is driven by service jobs, tourism, and residential growth.

Man, I remember this conversation from at least two decades ago. Commissioners said property taxes were unfair because exemptions meant some people paid very little. That’s where the MSBU (municipal services benefit unit) was born — flat fees on property, regardless of taxable value, used for a specific purpose.

The county has MSBUs for fire rescue, landfill, and stormwater, and none of them are popular with taxpayers. It doesn't seem to matter whether it's a tax or a fee; the money is still coming out of someone's pocket.

I heard folks at the microphone during county budget hearings saying taxes are forcing them from their homes. County commissioners want to keep property taxes in line while at the same time holding back a mountain of public needs that these very taxes pay for.

You see the dilemma.

State lawmakers and the governor don’t see the dilemma because they don’t work with a property tax revenue stream. Believe me…if property taxes funded the governor’s salary, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

Some people think there’s huge waste in county government just waiting to be uncovered. When that happens, taxes will drop. So says the theory. I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’m no protector of the government. It’s my experience, however, that if it were that easy to find waste, it’d be found by now. 

County commissioners and city council members, already under the thumb of state government in ways you cannot even imagine, are rightly a little unnerved by the property tax talk. It would be just like the State of Florida to eliminate a significant revenue source without replacing it with something reliable and time-tested.

That said, I like the debate. Let’s talk about it. There may be a better way to build this mousetrap.

Have an awesome Monday, friends.

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