Divemedic

Property Taxes

As I have posted before, property taxes in Florida are easy to understand, mostly.

Ad Valorem

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 called the “homestead exemption” of $25,000 from that market value if your home has a market value of more than $50,000. If your home has a market value of over $100,000, you can take another $25,000 exemption. This second exemption doesn’t apply to school taxes. The result is called your “assessed value.” Because of the second homestead exemption, this means that your home gets two assessed values: one for property taxes, and the second assessed value for school board taxes.

Each July, the property appraiser mails out the proposed value of each property to the property owner. If you don’t think that the value is fair, you have 30 days to appeal that valuation. Most people want it to be as low as possible, because that is the value that your taxes are based on.

It seems complicated, but it really isn’t. For example, let’s say that your house has been deemed by the property appraiser’s office to have a fair market value of $125,000, and your county charges a property tax rate of ten mills, plus the school board charges of 6 mils. You would take the $125,000 market value and subtract your homestead exemption to arrive at an assessed value of $75,000 for property taxes, and $100,000 for school board taxes. The tax of ten mills would make your property taxes $750 and $600 for the school board taxes, making your total property tax bill $1350. Clear so far? Good, because it gets a bit more complicated.

Save Our Homes

Back in 1995, the voters of Florida passed an Amendment to the state Constitution that limits the annual increase in the assessed value of your homestead to the lesser of 3% or the consumer price index. Since real estate increases more than that in value each year, the longer you own your home, the less you pay in taxes. The gap between the market value and the assessed value is called your “Save Our Homes” credit.

In most cases, you want the property appraiser to set your assessed value as low as possible. The only reason you don’t, is if you are about to move to a more expensive home. The reason is called portability. If you are moving from an old house to a new one, you can take your Save Our Homes credit with you. That can mean a significant tax savings.

Other Exemptions

There are other tax exemptions.

  • Any widow/widower who owns property and is a permanent Florida resident may file for a $5,000 exemption.
  • Homeowners who are totally & permanently disabled get a $5,000 exemption.
  • The un-remarried, surviving spouse of a law enforcement officer, a correctional officer, a firefighter, an emergency medical technician, or a paramedic killed in the performance of duty gets a 100% exemption on property taxes. There is an exception to this that I will explain later.
  • Homeowners over 65 years of age who have an income less than $37,500 a year get an additional $50,000 exemption.
  • In fact, there are a dozen more exemptions that also are available, but I don’t feel like listing them all here. The point is that the tax system has become cumbersome, confusing, and unfair.

Milage Rates

The tax collector (also an elected position) charges a “millage rate” as an “ad valorem” property tax. Each “mill” is 0.1% of your home’s assessed value.

The county charges me 5 mils, the school board charges a bit over 6 mils, water control district charges half a mil; police, fire, hospital taxes, and EMS collectively charge 1.4 mils, the town charges 7.5 mils, and some other charges total up to almost 21 mils, or about 2.1%.

Fees

Some towns and counties charge fees that are part of your property taxes, but are not based on your property value. These are usually flat fees, for example each address may be taxed $150 a year for fire fees regardless of value. This is usually done so that the local taxing officials can raise taxes for social programs while blaming the increase on something palatable like the fire department. They simply take the money they were spending on fire and redirect it to whatever pet project they want to fund, then use the fire fee money to continue (or even cut) the fire department’s funding. Then they blame the fire department for the “tax increase.”

Total Taxes

After homestead exemptions, other exemptions, and Save Our Homes are all subtracted, the result is the “Taxable Value.” The milage rate is applied to that number. If you own a $300,000 house, you would be paying $5500 a year in property taxes. I pay even more than that.

Taxes aren’t just a money grab, they are a means of social engineering when you grant carve out exemptions to favored groups like the AARP, illegal immigrants, and others. They are also a grift, in that much of this money gets directed into the pockets of politicians and their friends.

and you have to pay them, or see your property confiscated and your ass in jail.

One note about the exemption for public safety that are injured in the line of duty. If you are off duty and see an auto accident, medical emergency, or fire, the pressure to do something is large. I used to stop for those sorts of things. Until the case of Shane Kelly, that is.

Firefighter Kelly stopped to assist victims of an auto accident on the Florida Turnpike in 2002. Shane was off duty. He was killed in full view of his wife when a tractor trailer slammed into the accident vehicles.  There were 2 occupants of the truck that killed Firefighter Kelly, and there was enough confusion as to which of them was driving that neither of them was ever charged.

The Federal Government ruled that Sean Kelly was acting in his capacity as a private citizen when he was killed, and since his death was not a line of duty death, his widow was not entitled to any of the benefits of the LOD status. Imagine how you would feel as an EMT, Firefighter, or other responder if you knew that helping an injured person carries the same risk of injury or death whether you are on duty or off duty, except that if you are injured, not only are you NOT paid for your time and skill, but you are not insured for that potentially career ending injury. Who will feed your family? Care for your kids?

In a meeting with my employer’s attorney, where Firefighters were attempting to get a written policy on what would be considered Line of Duty injury for off the clock employees, we were told that such decisions for off duty personnel would be made on a case by case basis by Administration AFTER the fact. I made a comment along the lines of, “So you get to decide AFTER I am injured whether or not you will pay for it. Will that decision take factors like the cost of treatment and PR benefit to you into account?” That REALLY pissed off the attorney. (I call ’em like I see ’em.)

After I learned of that case, I stopped helping out while off the clock. That policy marked the end of my stopping to help in emergencies. In fact, that policy change was a huge factor in my decision to retire.

How do I feel about fire department taxes? That is a topic for later in this week. I know what you probably THINK my feelings are, but you are probably wrong…

By Divemedic, ago

Tools To Be Used

The headline reads: “Apopka daughter asks for fair chance after parents detained, father deported.” The left uses emotion to manipulate people. It doesn’t matter if it’s a shooting, a deportation, or even attempting to quote the Bible, the left wants to use your own feelings against you.

In this case, the leftist who wrote it wants you to believe that a little girl is being deprived of her hardworking parents. The reality is different- the daughter is old enough to drink, and her parents entered the country illegally, applied for residency 20 years ago, then never showed up to their appointment. A deportation order was entered against them.

In the intervening decades, he “ran a successful business.” What they don’t mention is that the reason the business was successful is because they are illegal. The name of the business is Juarez Investments, LLC. It was operating without licenses or registration until 2021. Meaning that they likely weren’t paying taxes for nearly 20 years. If I didn’t have to pay taxes, my business could be more successful as well. They aren’t law abiding, they are tax evading freeloaders who are making the lives of people legally living here even harder in the form of lower wages and higher costs.

This pair has been flouting the law for more than 2 decades. It’s about time they are sent home to Guatemala.

By Divemedic, ago

Ownership and Free Trade

You own things, and ownership of property was originally one of the three ‘inalienable rights’ mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. Yep, it was originally ‘life, liberty, and property’ before it was ‘life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.’ To own something means that you, as the owner, get to decide what is to be done with it, whether or not you keep or somehow dispose of it, and how much you will get for it if you should decide to dispose of it.

The thing that I ultimately own is my life. I can sell parts of it in exchange for things, for money, or for the services of others. That’s what labor ultimately is- the trading of portions of my life for things. I can make those portions worth more or less, depending on what I do with them. If those portions of my life are spent doing things that anyone else can do, that time is worth less than if I am the only one who can perform a certain task AND that task is one that others need or want done. That’s why Michael Jordan was paid as much as he was to play basketball, and why people who push brooms for a living don’t make much at all.

I can also own things. Those things can be acquired by selling my labor, they can be gifted to me, or I can trade for them.

I can sell or trade those things (or my labor) to others and use the proceeds from those trades to acquire the goods and services of others. The free trade of goods and services is a representation of free trade.

There is, of course, another way to acquire things. We can take them, either through deceit, through fraud, theft, or even through force. It doesn’t matter if I take them myself, or I coopt others into doing the taking for me, it is still not free trade.

Governments, as the paper says, are instituted among men to defend your right to ownership, with those governments deriving their just (moral) powers from those who would be governed. For many of you, you will recognize the preceding paragraphs as the philosophies of John Locke, referred to as Lockian Liberalism, or classical Liberalism if you prefer. For those of you who know the philosophy, you also know that it was this philosophy that was the basis for the founding documents of this nation.

The reason this is important to me is that, like our Founding Fathers, I believe that the main purpose of government is to defend people and their right to ownership. That ideal is one that our nation has unfortunately moved far, far away from.

There are even readers of this blog who somehow feel that the government’s job is to help them acquire the property of others at gunpoint. For example, the landlord who charges market rates for the temporary use of their property. Some feel that the law should force a property owner to rent it for some other rate, a rate that is inevitably to the benefit of themselves.

Likewise, their labor, the labor of others, and other goods. People will nearly always find a way to rationalize taking someone else’s property by force, especially when that force is being applied by an agent of government. After all, when a police officer does violence on your behalf to force a property owner to sell at a lower rate, it doesn’t really feel like robbery, does it?

Now that doesn’t mean that a landlord can cheat you. The contract (lease) should lay out the circumstances under which things will be handled. Air conditioning? The amount of rent? Who pays utilities? All of these are laid out in the contract. The only role that government legitimately has in such a situation is to ensure that both parties follow that contract.

This is true of other goods as well. If a seller represents a gold ring as being 22 grams of 22 karat gold, but it turns out to be merely gold plated pot metal, then the government has a role in regulating that fraud.

Try using that yardstick anytime you find yourself saying “there ought to be a law,” and see if your statement is morally correct.

I can already hear the argument that “what if no one will sell me that product for a price I want to pay” or “what if all properties’ rents are higher than I want to pay?”

Well, one of two things will happen-

  1. no one will buy or rent those goods, which will eventually force sellers to lower their prices or face being stuck with a product that isn’t selling
  2. someone else will buy or rent that property, proving that someone else thought it was worth it

So if you can’t afford a good or service, you either have to come to the realization that you need to lower your expectations, or you need to come up with more money.

That is true whether you are dealing with renting an apartment, hiring a lawyer, or buying a gold ring. You sell those things for the most you can get, and buy them for the least that you can. That’s how markets work, unless you are willing to lie, cheat, or use force to acquire them.

Which is, of course, not free trade.

By Divemedic, ago

Compromise

Republican Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar has introduced the “Dignity Act,” a law which allows illegal immigrants to stay in the US if they’ve succeeded in illegally being here for five years or more.

Don’t call her a RINO. This is exactly what the Republican party wants- they work hand in glove with the Democrats to make themselves richer and more powerful. The Republicans have been trading our rights and betraying Americans for decades, as any gun owner should be aware.

Both sides are playing us for fools.

By Divemedic, ago

Subsidized

If you pay women for getting pregnant, you get more pregnant women.

That’s why I think that, in order to be on public assistance, any woman who is getting it should be required to get a Depo shot. If you can’t feed the crotch fruit that you already have, you shouldn’t be out there getting creampied by every random dude you can find, just to get more government cheese.

By Divemedic, ago

Voting

You get the government that you vote for, and Oregon residents can’t understand how they keep seeing their taxes raised. They were only supposed to tax the rich, you see…

By Divemedic, ago