Julie,
I note your comments with regard to another area where non-immigrant visa holders are penalised, I do feel that Homestead Exception should be available to those individuals who legally live and work in the US and, furthermore, the enormous increases in property taxes witnessed over the past 12 months should not have to borne by the aforementioned sector of non-immigrant visa holders (E's,L's and H visas) (the max 3% per year with the balance payable upon sale is much fairer and puts this sector on a par with Florida residents. Whilst I have some sympathy with 'Snowbirds' and rental property owners I feel the case for non-immigrant visa holders is much stronger. I have copied below an article from The Wall Street Journal (Edited for brevity but still lengthy) which demonstrates just what can be achieved, our case is much stronger but who out there knows!
"In late March, hundreds of Florida homeowners jammed the chambers of county commissioners in Fort Pierce, Fla., to protest rising property taxes. Ed McIntosh, a 75-year-old retiree, showed up with a foot-tall stack of complaints from homeowners, 623 letters in all.He read a batch of them aloud, one tale after another of seasonal residents juggling rising insurance costs, hurricane-repair bills and escalating property taxes, which have more than doubled in five years in parts of the state. Such protests have become commonplace in Florida as the state's snowbirds -- winter residents, who are mostly retirees from the Northeast, Midwest and Canada -- fight back against a tax system they believe is unfair and onerous. Mr. McIntosh, a retired Ford Motor Co. finance manager who lives in Beulah, Mich., spends four months a year along the Atlantic coast in Jensen Beach. He complains that seasonal residents are "being discriminated against...We're carrying the state on our backs."
All across the country, homeowners are complaining about runaway property taxes. In many places, sharp increases in home values are to blame. But Florida's snowbirds are angry about something else -- an unusual dual-bracket tax system. Florida allows municipalities to set the taxable value of properties at different levels for permanent and seasonal residents. There have been cases of snowbirds paying property taxes 10 times as high as those of permanent residents living nearby.
Not surprisingly, many full-time Florida residents, who are shielded by law from big property-tax hikes, don't see it that way. Kenneth Wilkinson, a property appraiser from Fort Myers who pushed for the two-tier system, says anyone who owns a second home in Florida should bear higher property taxes because "they created the problem" of rising real-estate values by bidding up prices and by increasing the need for local services.
Florida's two-tier system is rooted partly in a "homestead" exemption that dates back many years. The exemption currently provides permanent residents of the state with an automatic $25,000 reduction in the assessed value of their primary homes. In addition, an amendment to the state constitution that went into effect in 1995, called Save Our Homes, caps the annual increase in assessed property values and taxes at 3% or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower. That too applies only to the primary homes of permanent residents. Anyone who owns a home in Florida can become a permanent resident, no matter how much time the homeowner spends in state. A homeowner needs only to submit an affidavit stating his Florida home is his permanent residence. But many snowbirds are unwilling, because switching permanent residence would mean giving up tax breaks or other benefits they get from their home state or nation. For Florida's permanent residents, the property-tax savings have been substantial and are growing. Last year, 28% of the value of Florida's residential real estate, or $362.2 billion in value, was shielded from property taxes, according to Florida's Department of Revenue. That cut the average property-tax bill on the primary homes of state residents by $1,600, the state said. Property
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