With a month and a half left before Florida voters pass judgment on the Florida legislature's proposed property tax cut in January, folks are choosing up sides. And New York gazillionaire Donald Trump is on the side of the tax cutters.
Turns out Trump is paying $1 million in property tax on one Florida house-- which sounds pretty shocking until you know that the house is worth $56 million.
Left unexamined by the article is whether a $1 million property tax bill is anything disproportionate for such a house. $1 million is about 1.8% of the value of Trump's home-- certainly on the high side by comparison to other states, but not outlandishly so. And, of course, by Florida standards, Trump is being treated exactly the same, for property tax purposes, as a fixed-income retiree with a tiny vacation shack miles away from the beach. In other words, if you think about the fairness of Trump's tax situation by comparison to that of other vacation homeowners in Florida, he's got nothing to complain about.
It's certainly true that broad classes of people have gotten screwed by the Florida property tax system, and vacation homeowners are definitely among them.
But one thing Trump might consider is that if Florida policymakers continue to enact unaffordable property tax cuts, pressure will build in the long run for a new source of state funding for needed public services: and the obvious choice for Florida would be a personal income tax. And while the vast majority of Floridians would be better off if the state traded in its property tax-sales tax mix for a personal income tax, Trump would be one of the relatively small number of wealthy folks who would be unambiguously worse off.
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