9 Actions Florida Should Take to Help Taxpayers Impacted by Hurricane Ian

1.     Postpone tax notices and waive penalties or interest for late tax filings in affected areas

2.     Extend the date for residents to take advantage of the tax discounts they would normally receive for paying property taxes and special assessments in November and postpone or defer the deadline for property tax installment payments

3.     Protect individual and business taxpayers from the risks for notices that they will likely not receive because their home or business addresses is not accessible anymore

4.     Issue no new audits in severely impacted areas, extend the statute of limitations and postpone existing audits that haven’t reached the assessment stage because these can’t be responded to while entire communities are still recovering

5.     Create procedures for fairly estimating taxes which can’t be calculated because records have been destroyed by the storm, moving away from the current method which significantly overestimates activity if no records are available

6.     Initiate procedures to offer payment plan assistance for late taxes, rather than resorting to the standard collection methods, like liens, levies, or bank freezes

7.     Retroactively apply the recently passed law that provides property tax refunds for residential property rendered uninhabitable as a result of a catastrophic event

8.     Provide tangible personal property relief and allow n on-residential properties rendered uninhabitable to receive property tax refunds

9.     Get Congress to pass a Disaster Tax Relief Act that includes provisions from past packages, including elements such as an Employee Retention Credit, an enhanced casualty loss deduction, and other relief provisions

Download the Recommendations

Other Resources

Florida Disaster.biz
FEMA
Florida Department of Financial Services
Florida SBDC
Disaster Contractors Network
Florida Disaster Fund

Florida TaxWatch Statement on Hurricane Ian Recovery

Community Involvement

/ Categories: Research, Budget/Approps, Budget Turkeys

Budget Sprinkle Lists Diminish Confidence in the Budget Process and Should Be Discontinued

It has become routine for the budget conference process to end with each chamber accepting the other’s supplemental funding list, or sprinkle list, worth more than an average of $120 million for each chamber – or a combined average of $285 million – annually over the last ten years. These lists are developed and agreed to in private by House and Senate leadership, and without any public debate or discussion. In the 2022 Regular Session, the House Sprinkle List included funding for 62 projects worth $257.1 million and the Senate added $511.8 million in funding for 161 projects. This means $768.9 million in hard-earned taxpayer dollars were spent as almost an afterthought, after all the various budget areas had been “closed-out.” In the last 10 years, these Sprinkle Lists have funded 1,718 projects worth $2.85 billion (see Table 1). The 2022 Regular Session was a record year based on the amount of money the House and Senate added to the budget through the sprinkle lists. (see Figure 1). 

Due to this lack of transparency and open public deliberation, the conference should be used exclusively to compromise when the two chambers disagree on funding levels and to decide whether an item funded by only one chamber should be included in the final state budget. This should not be the time to fund new items, particularly funding that goes to a specified private entity or narrow geographic location.   

This should not be done through Sprinkle Lists. The practice of spending hundreds of millions of dollars, largely on members’ pet projects, as an afterthought, should be discontinued. 

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