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

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Revisiting Housing Affordability in Florida - SB 102 Offers Good Solutions

The influx of residents to Florida has been overwhelmingly to the state’s urban areas (cities and towns over 50,000 residents according to the U.S. Census Bureau). Between 2010 and 2020, the state saw a 15 percent increase in urban residents. An estimated 87.7 percent of our residents live in these areas, making us a definitively urban-oriented state. Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, and Orlando have seen unprecedented growth in the past few years, and there is no sign of it slowing.

To prepare and sustain such great population growth, Florida must consider how best to develop enough housing for all income brackets. The Florida TaxWatch March 2023 commentary “Florida’s Housing Market: Trends of Supply and Demand” discussed how housing construction has been lagging behind this increased demand. In order to address the housing shortage, Florida is pursuing innovative ways to incentivize developers to build affordable units across the state. 

In order to make housing more affordable and sustainable, we must look for innovative solutions. Amending zoning regulation to allow for diverse forms of housing may help ease costs, allowing for faster development to meet our housing demand. SB 102 is directly addressing this concern. By allowing developers to develop multi-family housing units in commercial and mixed-use zones, we will be able to build more housing on less land, potentially driving down the cost of housing. Furthermore, using vacant commercial lots to build these developments may provide a unique solution to our housing affordability crisis. 

Yet, increasing housing density is no silver bullet. There are dozens of key factors that go into the cost of a home, such as building material cost, interest rates, and location. Nevertheless, increasing housing supply through urban infill is a step in the right direction toward making Florida affordable, sustaining the state’s successful population growth and the prosperity associated with it. 

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