The eleven day special session deciding the fate on the future of Florida's property tax came to end after only three days. For those of you that watched the videos showing Governor Crist praising the plans to eliminate our property taxes on our site, you'll no doubt be surprised disappointed with the plan that was chosen to be taken to vote.

The new plan mentions nothing about rolling back values to 2003, and nothing about eliminating property taxes and supplementing them with a higher sales tax. Instead, we're left with a plan that gives you a choice: slightly reduce your property taxes, or stay with the 3% yearly increase cap of the current 'Save Our Homes' plan (insert thunderous applause here).

Will this new plan win the vote on January 29th? There's guaranteed to be a toe-to-toe battle leading up to the decision. The new plan will leave schools with approximately $3.5 billion loss of property tax collection, leaving it up to the Florida Government to adequately fund education, and we all know how well that's been going. The proposed constitutional amendment to create a new, super-sized homestead exemption for primary homeowners needs support from 60 percent of voters.

The new plan would save taxpayers only about $8 billion over five years, analysts said, and is expected to save the average homeowner 7 percent on tax bills this fall. But the $174 average first-year savings would climb to at least several hundred dollars per year for many homeowners if the expanded homestead exemption gains approval. Needing no voter approval, a $15.6 billion rollback of city and county property-tax collections also was approved by lawmakers Thursday.

Want to know YOUR estimated 1st year savings? Head over to the tax calculator on the Orlando Sentinel


Haven't had enough? Here are a few more articles for your reading pleasure:

Tax Cut; New Fight Looms - Orlando Sentinel
Legislature Passes Tax-Cutting Plan - Orlando WESH TV2
Florida Lawmakers Approve Tax Cut Bill - MyFOX Orlando

Tags: property taxes, orlando, Crist, government, florida

Raise your hand if you're tired of waiting to hear what the government is planning on doing about your property taxes. Wow - everyone has their hands raised.

Well, here's another edition of the Florida Property tax update - a new segment we're calling "Will They, Won't They." According to today's Orlando Sentinel, the House-Senate committee discussing Florida property values still hasn't reached any conclusions (no big surprise there). The big news is they've tentatively agreed on a method to use - expand existing exemptions, such as homestead, and create new ones for non-homestead properties.

This news followed and earlier update from the House Democrats touting their plan for property tax reform, which would exempt 50% of a home's value if it's homesteaded, and 25% for non-homestead properties up to a max of $250,000 for larger commercial properties.

The House Republicans have a different suggestion with more dramatic exempt amounts.

It seems the main thing holding everything up is the amount of the exemption. A meeting of the joint House-Senate will take place on Monday, May 21st, at 1pm in Tallahassee, and another interim meeting scheduled before the full Legislature returns for a special session Jun 12-22.

As always, we'll keep you up to date on this battle. Tell us your thoughts in the comments section, or better yet, call Bill Nelson (our Senator) at (202) 224-5274, and tell him your thoughts, then post what HE said in the comments.

Tags: property taxes, orlando, Crist, government