$5 billion less in taxes: Florida plan to challenge DeSantis and could affect you directly
Seeking to rein in spending by the state government, House Speaker Daniel Perez has proposed “the largest state tax cut in the history of Florida.”
Florida lawmakers are working to hash out a state budget for the 2025-2026 fiscal year. The current proposal plans to spend $118.6 billion, but House Speaker Daniel Perez sparked a budget debate with an idea he put forth this week that would force the state government to rein in spending.
He wants to lower the state’s sales-tax rate from 6% to 5.25%, thus slashing state revenue by $5 billion a year. However, it may conflict with Governor Ron DeSantis own tax cut plans.
Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez: Not “a stunt or a tax holiday” but “a permanent, recurring tax reduction”
“This will not be a temporary measure, a stunt or a tax holiday. This will be a permanent, recurring tax reduction,” the Miami Republican told fellow members of the Florida House this past week. “This will be the largest state tax cut in the history of Florida. If we are successful, we will become the only state in the history of the United States of America to permanently reduce its sales tax.”
While on the one hand, it would give residents of the Sunshine State, who are dealing with Florida’s affordability crisis, a breather it would mean cutting some programs in the state Perez acknowledged. He said that will draw pushback.
“Of course, the special interests will say the sky is falling and the world is ending,” he said. “But it won’t and it’s not.” Perez added that those fighting the belt-tightening “have lost sight of the difference between their needs and their wants.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to eliminate property taxes
DeSantis has drawn up his own budget proposal which calls for roughly $3 billion less in spending than the current plan. The proposal by Perez may, however, conflict with the governor’s dream of reducing, if not completely eliminating, property taxes in the Sunshine State.
“You buy a home, you pay off the mortgage, and yet you still have to write a check to the government every year just for the privilege of living on your own private property,” he said during his annual State of the State address. However, he hasn’t presented any specifics of how he would provide homeowners with this tax relief while at the same time keeping local governments funded.
One proposal that he has voiced is shifting the taxation burden to tourists and foreigner visiting the state. “You have the ability in some of those areas that draw a lot of people to shift the tax burden away from your own people to people that are not residents of Florida,” DeSantis said recently. “I think that would be a better tax system than constantly having people pay higher property taxes.”
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