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

Juvenile Pre-Arrest Diversion

Historically, Florida has taken a tough- on-crime stance that bolstered its criminal justice system in some ways, but hindered it in others. Criminal justice policies like mandatory minimums, for example, made sentencing more consistent, but also limited judges’ ability to consider external factors, making sentencing harsher on low-level offenders as well as on Florida taxpayers. These and other tough-on-crime policies also led to overcriminalization, which had an impact not only on the number of adults coming into contact with police, but also on the number of children and adolescents coming into the juvenile justice system.

Fortunately, there has been a recent shift in juvenile justice policy toward approaches that provide sanctions to address the behavior of delinquent youth, while minimizing their involvement with the juvenile justice system. A central goal of this new shift in ideology is to ensure that juvenile residential beds are reserved for children and adolescents in need of stricter and more comprehensive supervision, while less expensive diversion alternatives that maintain public safety and reduce crime are used for low-risk juvenile offenders.

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