Friday, August 17, 2007

And they keep on writing themselves.......

I'm sure that everyone received their personal letter from Rob Turner this week. I got mine, too.

Mr. Turner personally(I'm quite sure) let me know that the possible passing of a property tax bill will save me money...blah blah blah --it's from a Florida politician, my attention span is only so great when it comes to the fertilizer that usually gets spread in such a manner.

I bought my house in early 2006 and thought that I'd dodged the bullet on ridiculous taxes when I got my bill last year. Well, fool me 8 times shame on me.  Yup, my taxes went up roughly 50% this year. But the REALLY GOOD NEWS is that I could potentially get tax relief in the amount of $41.36. It's too good to be true!!!! Raise my taxes by roughly $800 but cut them by $41.36? Thanks, you're too kind. Just be sure that my $41.36 in savings is taken out of infrastructure repairs, 
parks and recreation and, oh yeah, can I please be billed for emergency services when I need them? kay, thanks

How much "relief" are you folks seeing and where do you hope it gets cut from?

8 comments:

Unknown said...
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Jay McGee said...

Got hit with about a 50% increase too. Found that a bit odd and even more annoying, considering all the tax decrease hype.

Urban Eater said...

Anyone who purchased a Homesteaded home in 2006 would have paid the seller's taxes. Transalation, Mary bought her home in 2001 for $103K (lucky *!&%@!^@) and Homesteaded the property, Billy then bought the property from Mary in 2006 for $206K. Billy paid property taxes in 2006 based on Mary's 2001 purchase price and filed his Homestead. Then, the gov catches up and bills Billy according to his 2006 purchase price. Homestead has nothing to do with it. Taxes are based on the purchase price. It sucks. I'm stuck with almost a $1000K increase. Why does the State of Florida just increase the damn sales tax 1%??? I mean my god, Florida sales tax is only 6% (Hillsborough County tacks on another 1%), 1% is not going to effect the individual but in total will create a huge surplus of State funds. Am I missing something?
Oh yeah, I vote for cutting school days to 3 hour day sessions and get rid of the Fire Departments. I mean we all have hoses?????

Rick said...

Well the good folks at the Property Appraiser's office have determined that my market value went up 11.5% from January '06 to January '07.

The market slow down was well under way by April of '06. So where did these rising values discovered by Mr. Turner's office come from?

Oh I get it, he wanted to make sure they could get the full increase on every property allowed under the Save Our Homes Ammendment.

Shawn said...

I don't care if he decides my house went up 3 million percent in value. I'm homesteaded and locked in at 2004 rates plus 3% max per year.

I'm pretty shocked that realtors don't explain this stuff to new buyers. You'd think they would. But I've even seen the realtors *themselves* act all shocked when this happens, so perhaps that should tell you something about them, eh?

Quite frankly, we need an increase in taxes, as unpopular as that is. I'm all for the city privatizing fire, police, and schools. Then, when we're paying the costs directly, we might all agree taxes aren't as terrible as they seem.

Just don't get me started on insurance, which is the real problem in Florida, not taxes.

Rick said...

I guess you don't. After 7 years your assessment finally reached what you paid originally. Lucky you. Unfortunately, the appraiser's office assesses properties at 40, 50, 60, 99 percent of purchase price. Where your asessed is where you will begin the cap under save our homes.
In your case that was somewhere around 83% of purchase price in a calmer market. In mine, unfortunately it was an overheated market and then was assessed at 97.6% of purchase price. I guess that is what we call equal application of the same law and standards? Or maybe how about one of my buyers who bought at what the property appraiser had as fair market price only to see the assessment adjusted upwards of 45k above purchase price in 6 weeks?

Yeah it is kind of hard to prepared buyers for an arbitary target. For the record, I tell my buyers the property appraiser could go to 100% of purchase price.

My insurance is still less than my tax bill so I'll keep up my rant about taxes. Should I save you a seat at the budget hearings?

Unknown said...
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