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Property Taxes – Our Nemesis!

By
Real Estate Agent with Marc It Sold!

Finally someone has come up with a tax-cut proposal that is somewhat realistic.  David Simmons, a state representative from Maitland, has proposed a property tax plan that will offer big tax cuts, but asks homeowners of larger more expensive homes to get a lesser tax cut percentage.  More in line with how income taxes work.  Basically using a sliding scale approach. 

Here's how this would work.  All homeowners would get a tax break of 65% on the first $100K of assessed value of their home.  For homes valued $100-200K, these people would receive a 55% tax cut on the second $100K of the homes taxable value.  This would be further reduced to a 45% tax cut on the next $100K of taxable value and so forth with homes valued over $600K receiving a 5% tax break. 

Breaking this down, this would mean that a home valued at $200K (remember we are talking assessed value not the market value of a property) would pay taxes on approximately 40% of the homes value, while the owner of a $500K home would pay on approximately 56% of the homes value.

This is much more reasonable and differs greatly from Marco Rubio's plan which is to eliminate the property tax altogether on your primary residence & to raise the sales-tax.  This would have created a major shortfall in revenue for local and county governments.  Fiscally, I could never see this work in the long-run. 

As some of you have read my previous posts, my main concern with all of the tax proposals out there was that they were offering to fix a flawed system with an equally flawed system.  Yes, these politicians could all say, "Look what we've done for you."  That would only be short-lived. 

What are the implications of creating these revenue shortfalls?  Well, I wouldn't be surprised if we would see a property tax again in the near future. 

Granted, I am not saying that the tax cut plan proposed by David Simmons is flawless, but it seems to be the most realistic & best conceived of all that have been offered. 

Until next time - MARC IT SOLD!