Florida’s Governor is pressing the case for property tax abatement, saying he won’t entertain a House plan to cut sales taxes from 6% to 5.25%.
At Tampa’s Hula Bay Club, Gov. Ron DeSantis convened a roundtable designed to address his stalled-out request to phase out millage in favor of taxing “snowbirds and tourists” via hotel and consumption taxes.
“This is what it means to be a low-tax state,” he said.
But DeSantis also directly threatened to veto House Speaker Daniel Perez’s proposal as lawmakers look to hammer out a budget and tax framework during an extended Session.
DeSantis said he is willing to work with Senators and “relevant House members” on a Florida-first tax package, while saying the House sales tax reduction proposal is a nonstarter in any budget deal.
“None of the Senators support it,” DeSantis said. “Honestly, a lot of the House members don’t support it either, but the way the House is run, you know, they threaten you, they take away your committee, they do all that.”
DeSantis bemoaned that “Canadian tourists” would get a “tax break” under the Perez plan while visiting Florida, and said any proposal that emerges should focus on relief for Florida residents.
“I can tell you any Florida-last tax package is going to be dead on arrival,” DeSantis said. “We are not going to kneecap our ability to provide you property tax relief just so we can give a little bit of a benefit to Canadian tourists.”
DeSantis wants an amendment on the 2026 ballot to eliminate the tax on primary homeowners, but has thus far been frustrated by the House, which has instituted a 37-person select committee that includes what the Governor calls “far-left” Democrats, intended to “smother” his proposal “in the crib.”
He said House leadership “reflexively opposed” his proposal due to personal animus against him.
The Governor said “big growth” in city budgets raises the question of how much money cities actually need, urging a return to budget levels of 2019 or 2020, a time before the consequences emerged from COVID-era monetary supply expansion under Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
The roundtable members backed the Governor’s position. Republican Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, a strong DeSantis supporter and potential Chief Financial Officer appointee, lauded the Governor for being “ahead of the curve” on property taxes, saying citizens are in “revolt” amid general fund budgets that have doubled in “a lot” of cities over the last five years.
Ingoglia also noted that DeSantis’ plan would give the average homeowner a $1,000 rebate.
Bob McClure of the James Madison Institute argued that property tax is “about the American dream … wealth creation” and “what’s next for our children,” praising the Governor’s proposal as “key for a better future,” “cleaner for the consumer” and a boon for “wealth creation.”
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