Florida’s Governor says locals shouldn’t worry about proposals to end property taxes, as out-of-state visitors can pick up the slack.
“If you’re going to tax, I don’t want you taxing Florida residents’ property. Tax the tourists. Tax some of the foreigners,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said.
DeSantis would like a ballot initiative during next year’s General Election to eliminate property taxes altogether. He argues that local budgets have ballooned in recent years and that increased property taxes, which burden homeowners of modest means, have helped that happen.
That said, the Governor acknowledges that not everywhere in Florida has the same recourse to taxing visitors, and to that end he hinted at a two-tier system.
While policymakers “have the ability in some of those areas that draw a lot of people to shift the tax burden away from your own people to people that are not residents of Florida,” DeSantis notes that rural areas don’t have the same latitude that tourist hotspots might.
“I’m willing to work with rural on that because they don’t have the same luxury that a Broward County would have or Miami-Dade would have when you have people that are flooding down there. So the economic realities are just different,” DeSantis said.
The Governor made the comments in Palm Bay at the Ted Moorhead Lagoon House.
Elimination of property taxes would leave holes in current budgets.
As the Florida Policy Institute noted in a criticism of the tax cut concept, property taxes make up roughly a sixth of county and city revenue and more than half of school district revenue. If the taxes were eliminated, it would leave a revenue hole of more than $2,000 for every man, woman and child in the state.
That money would not come from the state, DeSantis said earlier this year.
“Don’t let anyone tell you we’re going to seek to raise state taxes because this body will not pass tax increases, and this Governor will not sign any tax increases,” he said during the State of the State address.
In lieu of state support and property taxes, local option taxes may be an option. These include extra levies on hotels, food and fuel, along with other discretionary sales surtaxes. But state law caps many of these, and some areas are more maxed out than others, complicating this potential workaround.
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