Ah, yes, the elected assessors of Florida – now there’s a political plum position. Our current assessor would appear to be honest, but there have been times…
Then there were the guys who did it strictly by lot size, which had a guy with a one bedroom trailer on 5 acres in North County paying more that a 4-bedroom house and pool on a water front lot.
As I said when Amendment 1 was came up, the property tax system is broken, but Amendment 1 didn’t do anything about the real problems – consistency and predictability.
]]>As a tax consultant, I can verify that Florida is not a low tax state, despite the fact there is no income tax. A few years ago I argued with a Florida Assesser about a tax they applied to those concrete parking lot bumpers; he said they were personal property and should be taxed accordingly. I consider them real estate; so did the client; so does every other state. An appeal would cost the client more than the tax. So they got their money.
]]>– SB the YDD
One of many problems with this approach is that it will discourage otherwise uninvolved persons from calling 911 when they spot an emergency. I have called 911 one time: it was when a newspaper vendor suffering something like epilepsy fell in the middle of a busy street in the middle of the night. Would I have phoned if I had known I’d be responsible for a multi-$100 bill? Well, I probably would have; would the average citizen have? Such a service needs to be available to everyone, at any time, at need.