CBHS Alumni Message Board: Amendment 1

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Amendment 1

Posted by Bryan Biery on 1/15/2008, 11:06 am
205.161.228.178

Concerned citizens are able to vote starting this week. It is important to get through the rhetoric and special interest groups and really understand what this amendment can mean to those who want to move to a different home, seniors seeking to downsize, and business owners facing rising property values, it is true.
But to me it is more important that the senior citizens and other residents who invested long ago in their properties not be taxed out of their homes and find themselves further unable to buy anything equal to their current homes. Not so incidentally,
Under the new tax plan, portability will apply even if a current homestead resident moves to a less expensive property, instead of transferring the difference, the transfer will be the existing SAVE OUR HOME percentage.
i.e. If your parent lives in a $300,000. home with an assessed value of $150,000. taxes are paid on $125,000. or about $2,100. If the parent moves to a $200,000. condo they would bring 50% or $100,000. in savings that reduces the assessed value to $100,000. on the condo. With the newly increased $50,000. homestead exemption from Amendment 1, the taxable value for govt. taxes (other than school taxes) would fall to $50.000. The new total annual tax bill would be about $1,000. (or about 1/2 of the old tax bill). Without this amendment their taxes could go up so drastically that they may not be able to buy at all!
More on this information can be found on www.yeson1florida.com
Many tax hungry politicians have been wanting to remove the protection of Save Our Homes from the beginning. Even with the current SAVE OUR HOMES property taxes have doubled in the past 6 years outpacing the average growth of a homeowner's salary, let alone the income of many with fixed or no incomes.
Local governments may have used their revenues to greatly expand their budgets and reserves instead of returning it to Florida's families and small businesses.
Under Amendment 1 some are focusing on the average $250. reduction on taxes that might appear to so many, (although woefully insufficient).
It is the homes of those who are struggling to keep them with which I am most concerned. Read the REAL numbers and do the math with real properties, not just yours, but those of your families and friends. Then vote knowledgably.