More Locals Enacting Senior Homestead Exemption

In yesterday's St. Petersburg Times, Eileen Schulte notes that a growing number of local governments are using their new authority (granted by the state in the 2007 regular legislative session) to double the local-option property tax homestead exemption for low-income seniors.

This means some seniors in selected areas of Pinellas County will get an exemption for the first $75,000 of value in their house. (The state offers a basic $25,000 exemption; an existing local-option exemption, authorized in the late 1990s, allows locals to piggyback another $25,000; this year's legislation allows a third increment of $25,000.)

If this sounds like a pretty big exemption, it is-- but it's important to remember that unlike the utterly un-targeted all-ages tax breaks being discussed by the legislature so far this year, the senior homestead exemption is limited to the low-income families who need it most. In particular, seniors with incomes exceeding $23,000 or so can't get the extra $50,000 local-option exemption.

Simply expanding this exemption to all age groups would be a simple way of trying to cope with anti-property-tax angst-- but would do nothing at all for Florida homeowners with incomes over this very low level, so that's not the answer for the Sunshine State.

But some variation on a means-tested homestead exemption is a pretty good idea. With higher income eligibility limits, this is the sort of solution Florida lawmakers ought to be looking at-- if they can ever figure out a way to pay for it.