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My Florida Ballot
Early voting starts in my state. Mid-terms have arrived. Here is what I'm voting for, and why:
Governor - Byron Donalds: I largely agree with most positions more than I disagree. I support police, and cracking down on criminality, I oppose most gun control. To keep a long story short, im about 60/40 as far as agreeing with Republicans/Democrats respectively. And will vote R if I must choose. This will be the same for the other smaller representees.
-Edit- Senate - Ashley Moody: Same reasons as Byron
Supreme Court - Carlos G. Muñiz: Keeping him.
CFO - Blaise Ingoglia: I did a little digging, he seems more effective at managing spending for the state. So I'm going with him.
Commissioner of Agriculture - Wilton Simpson: Unfortunately, I dont know the first thing about argiculture. But just looking at the perspective candidates websites. Wilton claims to have done some nice things, like providing for those in need via a Farming Feed initiative, and preventing medicine from getting water systems. Assuming this is true. He has my vote. I also went and checked what stuff he has voted for on Ballotpedia, most of it seems pretty good. He voted for things related to childrens welfare and having standards for education systems. I trust him. His oppononent, Joey, doesnt even have anything he has done on his website.
Attorney General - James Uthmeier: He was under DeSantis, and as an Attorney General he basically will over see the state legal system and such. I trust him to enforce the laws we have on the book and help police crack down on bad behavior.
Amendment 1 : I'm largely for increasing funding for emergencies, Florida tends to have a lot of natural disasters, so I dont see the argument against this just off intuition. So I'll vote yes.
Amendment 2 : Again, I unfortunately don't know much about agriculture, but it basically says that certain equipment wont get taxed. Im going to go with yes for this as well. But if anyone know a lot about agriculture, I'd like an argument as to why. Farming tends to be an expensive endeavor from just doing brief research, so I'm gonna vote to save the farmers a few dollars.
Amendment 3: I don't know how to feel about this. On the one hand, I kinda understand the fundamental argument for Taxes: someone needs to pay for government services. And from what I can tell, this bill will tax people the more expensive their houses become. It essentially reads as a progressive tax but for property. I tend to sympathize with progressive tax systems in general, so I don't have a problem with this. But it does seem unfair to those who bought their house for $100,000, but now pay more tax because that house is worth $300,000 they didn't exactly choose that, on the other hand for many this might have been a desired outcome. There are also those who would plan on just living in the house forever without selling so for those accruing a higher price on the house isn't very relevant. There is also the problem of landlords passing the tax on the current renters. I dunno, I'm still thinking on this, opinions are welcome.
Let's break down Amendment 3. The average Florida home value is about $375,000, and the current exemption amount is $50,000. It's my understanding that the tax rate is approximately $750 for each $50,000 in value, so as it stands the average taxpayer would pay $4,875 per year on the average home. If the bill passes, full implementation would reduce this amount to $1,875. A 61% decrease in property taxes for the average homeowner does not seem fiscally responsible, especially since the bill also caps annual increases on non-homestead property at 5%, down from 10%. I honestly don't see how local governments can handle that kind of decrease, and there's no mechanism in place to replace the funding.
Landlords can't claim a homestead exemption, so this wouldn't affect renters at all.
Florida seems to collect those property taxes and then disburse them back to the local governments. The state itself seems to be doing very well, fiscally. $3.8bn budget surplus, paying off debt ahead of schedule, well funded Rainy Day Fund. They also seem to get most property tax revenue from rental properties and second homes, which don't get the homestead exemption.
Might be they actually can just eat the loss in revenue to reward the people who actually live there. Perks of a competent government.
For long-term rentals, this presumably does get passed on as increased rent. It could be acceptable policy, I suppose, but I would describe that as "actually live there" too. Perhaps the incentive here to buy a home is fine, but worth considering directly.
Passing it on to Airbnbs sounds fine, though.
Econ 101 says that roughly 100% of property tax on improvements should be passed on in market rents, and roughly 0% of property tax on land. Econ 201 says that the actual pass-through is even less than that because the owners of houses built under a low-improvement-tax regime eat a loss.
My understanding of the empirical work on this question is that the theory is right for prices advertised to new tenants, but landlords and good long-term tenants generally renew leases with below-market rent increases, and that the size of the "loyalty discount" is lower when landlord costs (including property taxes) are rising. My personal experience as a market-rate tenant in my 20's is consistent with this.
I think Econ 101 would say that in the short term 0% of changing property taxes gets passed on to renters. You have X supply of houses and Y willingness to pay for housing by renters demand equation.
In the long-term new construction of rentals depends on a market required rate of return to develop new properties. Higher taxes reduces the profit on new construction so you get less new construction.
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