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

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Other Resources

Florida Disaster.biz
FEMA
Florida Department of Financial Services
Florida SBDC
Disaster Contractors Network
Florida Disaster Fund

Florida TaxWatch Statement on Hurricane Ian Recovery

Community Involvement

/ Categories: Research, Taxes

Taxpayer Independence Day 2023

Coincidentally, Taxpayer Independence Day 2023 comes on the same day Floridians’ federal tax returns are due. Last year, Taxpayer Independence Day came on April 23, the latest date since 2006.  This year, for the first time since 2020, Florida personal income is expected to grow faster than the taxes paid by Floridians to all levels of government.  As a result, it will take taxpayers five fewer days to achieve tax independence than it did last in 2022.   

When the pandemic reduced both federal and state tax revenues in FY2019-20, without a corresponding slowdown in Floridians’ personal income, Taxpayer Independence Day 2020 came on April 8, the earliest date since the Great Recession.  However, the pandemic’s negative impact on revenues was short lived, and taxes paid by Floridians entered a two-year period of unprecedented growth in 2021 and 2022, pushing Taxpayer Independence Day more than two weeks later, reaching April 23 in 2022. 

This period of tax collections far outpacing the growth in personal income was not simply due to government passing tax increases, although some temporary tax relief provisions Congress passed in response to the pandemic expired.  Still, the growth in federal revenue from personal income and payroll taxes was “larger than the currently available data on economic activity would suggest.”

Florida state tax collections also greatly exceeded economists’ projections, led by sales tax and corporate income taxes.  Despite several large upward revisions of the state’s revenue forecast, actual collections surpassed the Revenue Estimating Conference’s estimates for 30 consecutive months. 

It is now estimated that the long-anticipated slowdown in tax collection growth at both the state and federal levels will begin sometime this year, resulting in a slight drop in revenue. Coupled with personal income growth of six percent, Florida TaxWatch estimates tax independence will come sooner for Florida taxpayers in 2023.

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