Protect Florida's Future'
"The TBRC plan will force Floridians to pay almost $4 billion in new taxes, the largest tax increase in the history of our state."
--Senator Mike HaridopolosThis would be the largest tax increase in the history of Florida. Which taxes will be increased to raise the $11 billion required? What NEW taxes will be required?
- Mandates $11 billion in spending
- Provides only $7.4 billion in tax relief after Uncle Sam
- A $3.6 billion dollar tax increase required to hold education harmless
- Why jeopardize our education system and create an even MORE uncertain business climate?
- Would you grow your business in Florida or move a business to Florida if you did not know what the tax rate would be in 2010?
- Even if this passes, tax payers would not see property tax relief until the fall of 2010 - two and a half years from now.
Florida TaxWatch Releases Analysis of the Constitutional Tax Proposal known as Amendment 5.
The passage of Amendment 5 this November would be "detrimental to Florida's people, economy, and future," so concluded an analysis of the proposed constitutional amendment released today by Florida TaxWatch at a press conference in Tallahassee. The Briefing, Uncertainty Makes Amendment 5 a Bad Bet for Florida: The "tax swap" will likely be a tax increase, is the first in a series of reports on the proposed constitutional amendments offered by the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission.
Amendment 5 proposes to replace the required local effort (RLE) school property taxes with a combination of sources, relying mostly on increased sales taxes and anticipating a substantial increase in the base of what is not currently taxed. The constitutional amendment would also provide a 5% assessment cap for non-homestead property, lowering it from its current level of a 10% annual increase.
"Florida TaxWatch has long noted that the required local effort portion of the property tax is not transparent, it diffuses and confuses who is accountable, and it has been a major contributor to the significant increases in the property tax burden in Florida in recent years," said Dominic M. Calabro, President and CEO of Florida TaxWatch, at the press conference in Tallahassee. "Unfortunately, however, Amendment 5's proposed constitutional solution is worse than the problem."
Calabro explained that Florida TaxWatch has long supported the gradual elimination of RLE; however, "eliminating it all-at-once and leaving an $11 billion hole to be filled in yet unspecified ways raises significant concerns."
"Chief among those concerns is the uncertainty that Amendment 5 would create with respect to the tax system and the state budget, including uncertainty about the amount of taxes that the legislature would have to raise, what the tax package would look like, and how core services could be impacted by spending cuts," Calabro explained. Specifically, he added, "if additional spending reductions are necessitated by Amendment 5 -- on top of those already made in the past two years -- then the cuts to core functions of government could jeopardize services provided to vulnerable citizens, undermine the rule of law by slashing funding for the state court system, and actually reduce total education spending."
The Briefing highlights a number of other specific concerns with the details of Amendment 5.
A full copy of the report is available here or at www.FloridaTaxWatch.org.