DeSantis Wants to Eliminate Property Taxes

I'd argue this is a major sign of major trouble in the FL housing market. Screams of a last ditch effort to prevent the inevitable crash.

 

That is called projection. Don’t project your partisan blinders and inability to think critically onto others.

You call it a $.05 tax like all that’s being sold is a bag of chips.

Let’s put it in more realistic terms. The avg price of a car transaction is now $48,641. That 5 cents tax becomes $2481 on every new car sold. You think that is good or bad for business? Kind of ironic you are now all about raising sales taxes and tariffing goods, do you not realize you are the economic lefty here? Europe loves them some VAT taxes. For whatever strange reason (bizarro world), “conservatives” have decided Hungary should be an economic model for the United States. Hungary!. Hungary has the highest sales tax in the world. Higher than any other European nation. 27%. It’s not hard to predict what would happen here with such a tax scheme.

 

I would love to see is adopt the FairTax but do not see that happening in my life time-

 

Wait, you don't have a choice whether you own property? I'm pretty sure nobody is forced to own property, any more than they are forced to buy transportation or food or entertainment.

 

My comment was tnc or a joke. You had to know that?

amirite?

 

A lot of my tax money is schools and libraries, and almost 2K is CDD. My taxes wouldn’t disappear if the state eliminated theirs.

 

Seems that way but I had a choice to buy or not. I chose to buy as I feel it’s worth it living in my neighborhood 10 minutes from my son. I save about 1200 per year in insurance being in a newer home.

 

On the same token, the "choice" to avoid sales tax is to ... be some kind of hermit I guess?

 

Most of mine is paying interest of a loan (bonds?). I was told I could pay my part of the interest up front for a discount. No way as if I die, get sick, or have to move for any reason I’ve paid more than my fair share. If that makes sense?

 

I have always liked Florida not having a state income tax. Don’t understand how financing the budget would work without income or property taxes.

 

It's not about that. In fact, it will probably never happen. This is about staving off the crash that's coming and that we all knew was coming when home prices jumped 50-100% in a span of 5 years. Yeah, that was going to last. . . .

Now they're trying this gimmick in an attempt to keep the flow coming when, in fact, it's starting to flatten. "No State Taxes OR Property Taxes!!!" That's the hook they'll use to try and keep the bubble inflated. . . at least until Ron gets that lifetime Senate seat.

 

5% would not come close. It would be at least 10-15% to work unless you are advocating significantly reducing expenditures for police, fire and teachers.

Anecdotally, I have a friend that splits time between Fla and Tenn who just bought a new $60K car. There is a 3% difference in sales tax between the 2 states. That's almost $2K. Guess where he bought the car.

 

A 5 percent hike would require $240,000 in retail sales to make up the property tax I mentioned earlier. It’d take $360,000 in sales for the house next door. Go up and down the beach …

I mean, it’d save us money. I don’t know who’d be paying the $12,000, but we wouldn’t pay much of it at all.

 

A non-partisan commission to study the issue would be grand.
Unfortunately we no longer do anything in Florida in a non-partisan way, nor do we choose to do in-depth studies of issues.

 

I had to do a little digging I to this one. The FL dept of revenue says $56B in property taxes were collected in 2022. That's not just homes, also commercial, industrial, agricultural, you name it.

Sales tax.... a paper from Florida Tax Watch from 2023 says $42B is collected annually in sales tax.... And that includes $6B in local option sales tax. The statewide average is 7% sales tax.

To replace $56B in property taxes you'd need 56/42 x 7% plus the current 7%..... That results in a 16.33% sales tax.

Now consider this... The current property tax is paid by everyone. SFH owners. Owners of rental houses/multi family housing. Businesses. People who own second/vacation homes in FL. Out of state/country investors. Take those away, the burden shifts to a regressive, high sales tax paid by residents, and tourists.

What do you think the impact to tourism will be when they realize sales tax has spiked to almost 17%?

Part of me can't help but wonder if this is DeSantis wanting to stick it to or exert more control over the densely populated blue counties with typically higher priperty tax, higher budgets, etc.