Time to abolish Florida Property Taxes

The time has come to address the matter of abolishing property taxes in Florida and returning our homes, land and infrastructure back into the hands of its owners not the landlord in the Tax Collector and County Property Appraisers.

This will reduce your house payment, it will give you back the freedom of property ownership without fear of having your home confiscated. It frees you from the subservient position as renter to the tax collection office even if your home is paid for. It will empower you and put the government back in its place as your servant, not your master.

It does not matter if you own a $50,000 double wide trailer or a $50 million mansion. If you own it, you worked for it and the government has no claim on it. PERIOD. Ever.

Progressive politicians from both political parties embrace property taxes and the power it gives them and the government over your accumulated wealth. You work hard you raise your families and yet you are chained to the wall of City Hall and the County Administration building. Enough already. Its time to stop this redistribution of wealth.

What is a Budget?

You all have a family and or a household budget. In our local government an annual budget is a financial, operating, and capital plan for the coming fiscal year. It provides an outline of service levels provided to the citizen and public capital investments in the community, to be used by both you the citizen and the local government.

What is a Millage Rate?

The millage rate is the tax rate that is applied to property values to generate the revenue needed to pay for services proposed in the budget. A mill is a rate of tax equal to $1 for each $1,000 of assessed taxable property value. If a piece of property has a taxable value of $100,000 and the millage rate is 1, the property owner would pay $100 in taxes.

The time has come to zero out the millage rate and fire the landlord (County Tax Collector and Property Appraiser). All services being paid for in property taxes need to be funded from revenues that come from the sale of goods and services not your home or business structure and land. Each county must cut its waste and ensure good stewardship of tax dollars to help. From what  I can see (after reviewing the county budgets in all 67 counties) there is massive waste and abuse of taxpayer money including big salaries for executives, etc. Shall I can continue?

The County Tax Collector, with the assistance of the Property Appraiser, is nothing more than an over paid landlord sucking the citizenry dry and redistributing their wealth to local government agencies.

Proposal

Request that all Florida law makers that agree start drawing up plans for the FY 15 legislative session in March 2015 to abolish property taxes.

Tax payer money spent to fund illegal immigrants, their education, their health care and the like must be cut off and this money used to fill part the void in the loss of property tax revenues. Annually Florida tax payers fork out $5 billion to educate, medicate and incarcerate illegal aliens. This would free up more than enough cash to help in the elimination of property taxes statewide in Florida. The 67 counties can divvy up this savings to pay their police and fire departments. The lottery offsets the cost for schools.

The median property tax in Florida is $1,773.00 per year for a home worth a median value of $182,400.00. Florida counties collect an average of 0.97% of a property’s estimated fair market value as property tax. This money belongs in the pocket of the homeowners not the government. The government did nothing to build this house other than regulate the builders to appease tree huggers and spotted owl lovers.

Section 200.065 of State Statutes outlines the rolled-back millage rate, known as the “no tax increase” rate

because it allows the entity to generate the same property tax revenue from year to year, adjusted only by any new properties that may have been placed on the property tax roll. I want his statute to read – zero state wide and the property taxes returned to the control of Florida citizens.

Let’s see who has the guts to tear down the statist tax and spend legislature and return the wealth accumulated from hard working Americans in property taxes and put it back in their wallets.

---