More Florida Seniors Get $75,000 Property Tax Break

News continues to trickle in about Florida localities who are taking advantage of the opportunity, newly granted to them by a constitutional amendment approved by Florida voters last fall, of adding an extra $25,000 "homestead exemption" from property taxes for all over-65 homeowners. The town of Miami Lakes has approved the exemption, which means that if you're over 65 and live in Miami Lakes, the first $75,000 of your home's value is now exempt from tax.

(The math on this: there's a statewide $25,000 exemption; for almost 10 years, locals have been allowed to do an extra $25,000 exemption for low-income seniors only; and now, participating locals can add a third increment of $25,000 to the exemption total, again for low-income seniors only.)

RE the question of whether this policy change is a smart thing, Laura Figueroa's Miami Herald article on this change lets local officials do the talking:

''Our senior citizens living on fixed incomes are our most vulnerable group,'' Mayor Wayne Slaton wrote in a memo to Town Manager Alex Rey. "Providing them extra tax relief should continue to be our goal.''... More than 400 households are eligible for the exemption, said Rey, who estimated the town would lose about $24,000 in tax revenue as a result of the increased exemption. ''It's a minimum financial impact, but the benefit to the individual households was largely needed,'' Rey said.

Without belaboring the point, there's a good policy question here: if your concern is "senior citizens living on fixed incomes," why are you enacting a tax break that provides not a dime to low-income senior renters?

The short and not very interesting answer is that this is the option available to Florida local governments right now. But then what folks ought to be talking about is why better-targeted reform options, like a low-income property tax "circuit breaker" credit, aren't being made available to locals.