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

Budget Watch - Proposed House and Senate Budgets for FY2016-17 are $1 Billion Apart

The House and Senate passed their respective state budgets for FY2016-17 with four weeks remaining in the 2016 Session. They will now go into the budget conference process to negotiate the differences. Conference meetings could start as early as this week (the week of February 22). First, the House Speaker and Senate President must agree on allocations, the amount of money available for each policy area in the budget (education, human services, criminal justice, general government, etc.). These negotiations take place in private.

The Senate proposes to spend nearly $1 billion ($988 million) more than the House, due in part to its plan to propose far less in tax reductions than the House’s $1 billion tax cut package. The Senate has not settled on its tax cut proposal.

The House budget totals $79.981 billion and the Senate budget comes in at $80.969 billion, which would be the largest budget in history. The House proposal is $1.584 billion (2.0 percent) more than current year spending and $728 million (1.0%) more than the Governor recommended. The Senate budget would be a 3.3 percent increase over current year spending. The House is proposing a budget increase for 20 state agencies, and a decrease for 12 agencies. Under the Senate plan, 20 agencies would receive an increase.

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