Quote:
Originally Posted by golfing eagles
Thank you. Just a couple points:
You may pay less for a can of soup at Winn Dixie, but that's not the analogy. You would probably pay less for fire services in Wyoming as well, but that's all apples and oranges. The analogy was paying more for exactly the same thing in exactly the same place and at exactly the same time.
I'm not familiar with the exact calculations, but you give the example of a 350K vs 450K home being $75, the difference being that part of the non ad valorem assessment based on home value. How does that math work if someone is lucky enough to own a home worth 1.5 million???? Does that boost the difference to $800???? Again, I'm just not a fan of so-called "progressive" taxation which is basically another Robin Hood scheme for redistribution. Why not just take the total cost of fire protection, divide it by the number of homes and charge an equal assessment on all, since all are "buying" the same protection?
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If you can give me the address of a $1.5M home I can work the calculations. I don't want to try to guess what the actual numbers might be.
Making it much more simple, we live in the "Robin Hood" system today, approval of the IFD does not change that. We can talk about how we would prefer to pay for fire protection but we have not been given that choice. We have a choice between paying Sumter County and letting them fund the VPSD or we can approve the IFD and fund the VPSD directly.
If we consider the $1.5M and $350K to be assessed values then the property tax paid today is $8,385 and $1,957. If fire protection is $124+1.65mils then the two are paying $2,599 and $702 today.
It does make some sense to charge more for fire protection of a larger home than for a smaller home. More floors, more rooms, more flammables all could require more resources and effort. Does it cost $75 more to protect a home that cost 30% more? I don't know.
A flat fee for fire protection? Great idea but.....
- I suspect it was politically unpopular to suggest raising the $124 to $700.
- The guy in the 1,000 sq ft home is not going to feel it's fair to be charged the same as the guy in the $1.5M home
- The guy in the $1.5M home is not going to feel it's fair to be charged the same as the owner of the Publix
- That is not the option being offered to us in this referendum
Just a small note: A flat rate is not a "progressive tax," it is generally referred to as a regressive tax. Both the current property tax and the proposed IFD tax are flat rate: everyone pays the same rate, you just pay more if you have a more expensive property. A progressive tax would be like our Federal Income Tax where the rate increases as your income increases.