Amendment 3

Perhaps it hasn’t been clear to my readers, especially those who don’t live in Florida, what exactly Amendment 3 does. First a brief review of how Florida does property taxes.

In Florida, the county property appraiser is an elected position that estimates what your house is worth each year, called your “market value.” If your house is your primary residence, you can take a deduction from this valuation called the “homestead exemption” of $25,000 from that market value. There is a second $25,000 deduction that applies to value above $100,000, but only for non-school taxes. The result is called your “assessed value.” Clear as mud so far?

The tax collector for your county (also an elected position) charges a “millage rate” as an “ad valorem” property tax, and this rate is set by the local and city governments where your house is located. Each “mil” is 0.1% (1/1000th) of your home’s assessed value. There are other things invovled and it can get quite complicated, but those are the basics.

Example: Let’s say the property appraiser says your house is worth $500,000. You live in it as your primary residence, so you claim the homestead exemption. You would then pay school taxes on $475,000 of that value and ad valorem taxes on $425,000 of that property.

Your county charges a property tax rate of 4 mills, the school board charges of 4 mils, and the town you live in charges 6 mills. Your tax bill would be:

• $1800 to the county
• $1900 to the school board
• $2700 to the town
• So your total tax bill is $6400.

What people in Florida are angry at, is during COVID a lot of people moved here from other states and began remote work. It created a super building boom, housing prices skyrocketed, and tax revenues, since they are tied to real estate valuation, went up with them. Population in Florida increased by 20-30%, but tax revenues doubled or even tripled during the same period. As a result, counties and cities are flooded with tax revenue, but homeowners are getting bent over the tax collector’s desk, and there isn’t even any K-Y.

So Amendment 3 has gained traction. What it does is this:

• increase the homestead tax exemption for non-school taxes to $150,000 in 2027
• Then increases the non-school homestead exemption to $250,000 in 2028, with the amount indexed to inflation starting in 2029
• provide that new residents receive a smaller exemption until they’ve lived in the state for five years
• cap the assessed value increase of non-homestead properties, such as rentals and commercial buildings, to 5%, except for school district taxes;
• limit counties and municipalities to spending property tax revenue on public safety, education, infrastructure, natural resource projects and flood control, local bonds, employee retirement benefits, and government operations

What does this mean? It means that school tax revenue won’t change. It means taxing authorities that aren’t schools will lose about 10% of their tax revenue compared to 2026. (Ad valorem taxes are about 18% of county and city budgets). So in our example above, the taxes on our $500,000 house in 2027 would be:

Your Property Taxes in 2027 with Amendment 3

The property appraiser still says your house is worth $500,000. You live in it as your primary residence, so you claim the homestead exemption. You would then pay school taxes on $475,000 of that value and ad valorem taxes on $325,000 of that property.

Your county charges a property tax rate of 4 mills, the school board charges of 4 mils, and the town you live in charges 6 mills. Your tax bill would be:

• $1300 to the county
• $1900 to the school board
• $1950 to the town
• So your total tax bill is $5150.

Amendment 3 in 2028

Then in 2028, it would change again. The property appraiser still says your house is worth $500,000. You live in it as your primary residence, so you claim the homestead exemption. You would then pay school taxes on $475,000 of that value and ad valorem taxes on $250,000 of that property.

Your county charges a property tax rate of 4 mills, the school board charges of 4 mils, and the town you live in charges 6 mills. Your tax bill would be:

• $900 to the county
• $1900 to the school board
• $1350 to the town
• So your total tax bill is $4150.

In this case, Amendment 3 would save you about 35% on your tax bill on a $500,000 house.

If your house was worth more or less, the savings would change.

• On a 250,000 house, your 2026 taxes would be $2900, and your 2028 would be $900, saving you 69%
• On a 750,000 house, your 2026 taxes would be $9900, and your 2028 would be $7650, saving you 23%

Criticism

Critics claim this would benefit the rich. They are playing math games. The lower ends of homeowner values would see the largest savings- a person with a $250,0000 house would see their taxes cut by nearly 70%, but would get a $2000 savings, while the owners of million dollar homes would see a cut of 17%, which represents a $2250 cut in property taxes under our fictional millage rates.

They also claim cities will be forced to cut services like police, fire, schools and libraries. They may try to do that, but they aren’t forced to. They can always cut bullshit programs that are nothing but boondoggles, but as I have been showing you in the posts about this, fire and police departments around the state are quite well funded and could probably use some cuts. I say that as a retired firefighter- fire departments have more money than they know what to do with at this point, so they are on a spending spree the likes of which this state has never seen.

So there you have it- Florida’s Amendment 3 in a nutshell. If you see someone who is opposed to it, ask them where they work. It’s probably one of the governments that will see cuts, or an NGO that depends on their gravy train.