The cost of owning a home in Florida has risen dramatically over the last few years. As the demand for homes has risen, property values have increased. Property values are the basis for determining your share of the property tax.

The increase in the value of homestead property for property tax purposes was capped through the Save Our Homes (SOH) amendment to the Florida Constitution in 1992. But part time residents, commercial property owners, rental property owners and investors are not able to qualify for the SOH homestead cap. The value of their property and their resulting property tax bill rose dramatically. In addition, even full time residents who wanted to relocate, upgrade or downsize from their homestead property have found that the property tax they would be required to pay on the new home was dramatically greater than what they were paying on their current home.

What You Need To Know

Your Sarasota County Commissioners are concerned about the property tax dilemma facing us all. As responsible stewards of your tax dollars over the last five years, we have operated under policies that hold the growth of county government constant.

We adopted a resolution to show our commitment to maintain these sound policies. This commitment is memorialized in a resolution called the Taxpayers Bill of Rights. You can learn more about these policies by watching the Property Tax - How it's used to provide county services presentation. We also adopted a proposal to modify the existing property tax system - the Balanced Property Tax Reform Plan. You can view these documents and the presentation by clicking on the links on the left.

Property Tax revenue is used to fund local government - not state government. The Governor, the Senate and the House of Representatives are all working on plans for Property Tax Reform. The plans proposed by the Governor and the House Leadership to date are drastic, estimated at as much as a 40 percent cut in local government revenue. Adoption of these plans would necessitate a quick, unconsidered reduction or cut in your existing local government services.

The Florida voters passed a constitutional amendment requiring a periodic review and proposed changes to the entire state and local government tax and budgeting system by a commission called the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission. This Commission has already started their review. The Commission is charged with proposing changes before the 2008 election. For more information on the Commission visit the Florida Association of Counties Web page linked on the left.

updated 4/27/2007