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: Research, Budget/Approps

Budget Watch - The Whole Story of State Spending

The 2018 Legislature passed a $88.727 billion state budget—the General Appropriations Act (GAA)—which recently took effect on July 1. But that doesn’t tell the whole story of what was spent by lawmakers last session.

While the GAA price tag gets all the publicity, other appropriations can go largely unnoticed. This includes appropriations made in other bills or the “back of the (GAA) bill”, and appropriations for the prior fiscal year. All these appropriations are not included in the GAA total.

The Legislature routinely makes supplemental appropriations in other substantive legislation, but it is usually a relatively small amount. The last three sessions have seen an escalation of these types of appropriations. After averaging $39 million per year from FY2007-08 to FY2014-15, the Legislature made appropriations in other bills totaling $131.4 million and $2.5 billion1 in the next two sessions. The 2018 Legislature made $600.1 million in these supplemental appropriations.

Print
2377 Rate this article:
No rating

x