Property Tax in Pinellas County

Chris Moschini
Aug 23, 2017 · 2 min read

Residents of St Petersburg, FL have asked for more affordable housing, and for the impacts of new residents, new development, new employment to better benefit the existing local community rather than replace or displace the community.

To do this we need to have a clear view of what exists today, and one of the major tools to encourage beneficial behavior from developers and property owners (and discourage harmful behavior) is tax. The primary tax levied on both is property tax, and that is primarily applied at the County level.

This site provides a good overview of the existing state of county property tax.

The average Property Tax is 1.01%, or $2,020/yr on a $200k house. This is a fair bit lower than the national average. Property Tax rates are referred to as “Millage,” which is defined as points per thousand; so a millage rate of 1 means you pay $1 per year, per $1000 of property value. Truth In Millage (TrIM) is applied each year as the County reassesses every property to a new, usually higher, assessed value.

Two major pieces of legislation must be considered when improving how property tax is assigned. First, the Homestead Exemption allows a homeowner that lives in the property they own to pay less property tax; the home is assessed at $50,000 less than normal. So, someone in a cheap home they bought for $100,000 is paying half the property tax they would have. Someone in a McMansion or in a densely populated, high-demand area might have a home worth $800,000, making the $50,000 discount far less impactful.

Second, the Save Our Homes Amendment is a part of the Florida Constitution since 1995. It prevents those with the Homestead Exemption from seeing their property tax increase by more than 3%. If Inflation is less than 3%, it’s limited to the rate of inflation. Interestingly, the Homestead Exemption is merely state law, meaning the Florida Constitution determines eligibility based on something that is not a part of the Constitution. Put another way, the State Legislature could plausibly get rid of the Homestead Exemption and throw the Save Our Homes Amendment into legal chaos, which says something about the efficacy of the Florida Constitutional Amendment process.

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