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Florida weighs ditching property taxes and sticking Canadians with the bill

20 points throw0101a 3 hours ago 10 comments

dabinat 2 hours ago | parent

Something tells me federal taxpayers (or more precisely, those in blue states) will end up footing the bill for this.

silverFork 1 hour ago | parent

Why would blue states pay property taxes in Florida? Even if Florida declares bankruptcy and no other state will foot the bill.

throw0101a 57 minutes ago | parent

> Why would blue states pay property taxes in Florida?

The GP may be referring to something like the difference between the taxes that are collected federally and paying of various services ('balance of payments'):

> In FY 2024, the federal government collected around $5.07 trillion from states and their residents through taxes on individuals and businesses and redistributed about $4.87 trillion back to states and residents through programs like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, and education grants.

* https://usafacts.org/articles/which-states-contribute-the-mo...

Currently Florida 'paid in' more than it 'took out'.

SilentM68 54 minutes ago | parent

By definition, blue states prefer taxation of its residents. This belief will be part of blue state policies whether Florida taxes or does not tax Canadians.

silverFork 1 hour ago | parent

It is not a bad idea to have Canadians completely diverge from US economy. Sell it and take your money back to Canada.

Nevertheless, Canadians own something like 500k properties of 7M-10M properties in Florida. The $12B of tax deficit carried by those properties alone would raise their taxes to $24k a year per year for $300k property; Good luck collecting. In 4 years they would lose $100k of property price to taxes so its a no brainer that they would sell and get out and they would never look back. Canadian Snowbirds will obviously choose places like Mexico to just rent; why buy.

They are going to transfer the ownership to Americans and then what? Then the deficit would even rise faster to $13B .

jleyank 1 hour ago | parent

If they don’t have a property or wage tax, how are they going to pay for any state or local services? Their sales tax isn’t particularly high… Are they going to try and do it on the backs of tourists and non residents? Risky, as there’s lots of places to go that are warm on the ocean.

lesuorac 29 minutes ago | parent

I mean just don’t have that state service.

I’m sure the members of say the Palm Island Home Owners Association don’t want their tax dollars going outside of Palm Island.

I take it you haven’t been to Florida much during election season, Stop Socialism is a common billboard.

exabrial 31 minutes ago | parent

Property taxes are the worst kind of taxes. Nobody should be fined just for owning something. Once it's taxed once, it should never be taxed again.

cinntaile 21 minutes ago | parent

Property taxes make the real estate market function better. If you don't need or use the property, you don't want to keep paying property taxes so you list your property up for sale.

Hammershaft 6 minutes ago | parent

Property taxes are among the best taxes. They're highly efficient, they encourage development on underutilized land.

The Federal Reserve has also found they improve the affordability of buying homes, which leads to younger people getting into the housing market faster.

https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1955007478078255107

https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2024/how-higher-prope...

A land value tax is even better, because it doesn't financially discourage improving your property, and it strongly increases the incentive to sell or develop underutilized land.