Florida legislature fails miserably

OK, so here's the thing. EVERYONE in the state is suffering from property tax increases. Especially homeowners who have seen the values of their homes rise and their property taxes rise and now they can't move because if they sold their home and bought another one, their taxes would be even higher. It's a sad state. In fact, what's been going on in Tallahassee would be hilarious if it weren't so sad. So, the House wants to eliminate our property taxes and replace it with a 2 percent sales tax increase. For me, that would be a 6000 dollar tax cut coupled with approximately a 100 dollar tax increase in regards to sales taxes, based on last year's spending. That's great for me, but not so good for the local governments. Of course, they could use some belt tightening, but that's a lot for them to absorb all at once. The Senate wants to roll back my property tax to last year's levels. Well, I'd have to thank them for my 37 dollar a month tax cut. That's it! Considering my taxes and insurance increased over the past year to send my escrow soaring up 132 dollars a month, a 37 dollar a month tax cut just doesn't cut it. It isn't fair and it isn't meaningful. The Senate isn't interested in meaningful apparently. The governor's statements include raising my homestead exemption to 50K. Again, when the homestead exemption of 25K was originally passed, average home values in the state were around 80K. That's around 32 percent of your home's value that wasn't being taxed. The current average value of homes in the state is around 385K, so at the still 25K exemption, that's about 6.5 percent of your homes value. So... doubling that to 50K wouldn't do so much. That would make it about 13 percent of your home's value. So for me, that would be a tax cut of 375 dollars, or 31 dollars a month. Again, not particularly useful. If they are serious about using the homestead exemption to give us a tax break, they should raise the exemption to the levels of when it was originally set up. So, that would be an exemption of about 125K, not 50K. With that, my taxes would be cut 1547 dollars, or 129 dollars a month, which is starting to look better to me. At least that amount gets my escrow down to last year's dollars. I think the fact that they couldn't reach an agreement in the legislature and that their plans (except the House plan) are less than useful and certainly not meaningful is a huge failure and disappointment. They say they'll have a special session to resolve the issue in June. That special session will probably cost about as much as any tax cut they'll give us. In the end, the House bill is too large a cut and the other ideas aren't even worth discussing. My idea at least has merit. Combine it with a small half cent increase in the sales tax, plus a tax year rollback to around 2002-03 levels, and you are talking a significant tax cut that won't destroy local government funding while still providing significant relief to homeowners.