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

Other Resources

Florida TaxWatch Statement on Hurricane Ian Recovery

Community Involvement

/ Categories: Budget/Approps

Budget Watch - General Revenue Estimates Increased by $392 Million

The General Revenue (GR) Estimating Conference met on January 15 to develop a new revenue forecast for Florida. These estimates of available GR are used by the Legislature in meeting its constitutional mandate to pass a balanced budget. The new estimate provides the Governor and Legislature some good news.

The GR Conference increased the estimate of collections by $306.0 million in the current year and $86.0 million in FY2020-21—a two-year total of $392.0 million. When coupled with other changes—such as more unspent GR from FY2018-19 rolling forward into FY2019-20—lawmakers have $567.1 million more available for the next budget than was anticipated when the Long-Range Financial Outlook was released last September (see Table 2). The Outlook predicted budget writers would have a surplus of $174.2 million after funding a continuation budget for FY2020-21 (before any tax cuts or trust fund sweeps).

These new estimates recoup some of the money lost from the previous estimate (August 2109), which reduced the forecast for GR by $867.7 million over the two years. Even with the increase, the total amount of GR now expected to be collected in FY2019-20 ($33.2 billion) is still less than collections in the prior year ($33.4 billion). A drop in net GR collections from one year to the next is a rare occurrence in Florida, happening only after the Great Recession. This decrease in FY2019-20 is due to the loss of all Indian Gaming Revenue and a windfall in corporate income taxes collected in FY2018-19—resulting from the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act—that is being refunded to taxpayers this year.

Positive annual GR growth is expected to resume next year, which estimated growth of 3.6 percent in both FY2020-21 and FY2021-22. This is despite a slight reduction in the estimate of collections for FY2020-21 of $25.5 million.

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