ORLANDO, Fla — We’ve all heard the arguments about how Amendment 3 might or might not impact services in our local communities.
Here at WFTV, we wanted to put the political debate aside and look at what this property tax amendment that’s on the ballot could actually mean for homeowner property taxes in central Florida.
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The first thing to keep in mind is the tax exemption homeowners get for school taxes would remain the same. For most of the remaining taxes, the homestead exemption would increase each of the next two years, which would mean a tax savings.
With Floridians seeing rising prices on everything from groceries to gas in recent years, getting relief on property taxes could be welcome for many homeowners, but how much relief could Amendment 3 really bring for the average homeowner if passed?
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Let’s start with how property taxes work now. The assessed value of your home is set by your local property appraiser. Your tax rates or millage rates are set by your local leaders.
For the school taxes, homeowners get a $25,000 exemption. So, if your home is assessed at $250,000, your school taxes would be calculated by multiplying $225,000 with the millage rate. In unincorporated west Orange County, right now that would come to just over $1,400.
The remaining parts of your property taxes are eligible for around a $50,000 exemption. It’s actually a little over $50,000, but for the sake of simplicity, we’ll use that number. So, that same $250,000 property in Orange County would be calculated at $200,000. At current millage rates, with the math, it would come to around $1940 dollars. Add those non-school taxes to the school taxes and it would put a homeowner’s total property taxes add up to a little more than $3,340 a year.
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In 2027, the school portion of your taxes won’t change. So, they would be just over $1,400 on the home assessed at $250,000 we talked about earlier. On the other part of your taxes, you would get a $150,000 exemption. That means on a $250,000 home, you would subtract $150,000 and the remaining taxes would be calculated using $100,000. Multiply that by the millage rate and it would lower the non-school taxes on that home to around $970. In this example, it basically cuts the non-school taxes in half, so in our example you would save around $970 in 2027.
In 2028, the non-school exemption would jump to $250,000. On a home assessed at $250,000, the $250,000 exemption would drop the non-school part of your taxes to zero. That means you would just pay your school portion of the taxes, saving around $1940 in 2028. Total savings over two years would be just over $2,900.
So, what if your home is worth more, like with an assessed value of $500,000? Your savings would actually be very similar dollar-wise to the $250,000 home, but the percentage of savings would be lower. In 2026, your total taxes would be roughly $7,372. In 2027, they would drop to just over $6,400. In 2028, you would see another drop to $5,434.
We saw the similar savings on a $1,000,000 home. A home assessed at a million dollars would go from around $15,387 to $14,418 in 2027 and down to just under 13,500 in 2028. Again, you can see the taxes would go down each of those two years by around $970.
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Using the same formula with different the millage rates in unincorporated Seminole county, taxes on a home near Oviedo with an assessed value of $250,000 would be around $2,862. Total taxes would drop to about $2,020 next year, and down to around $1,176 in 2028. So, total taxes would drop around $840 dollars each of those two years. So, savings over two years would be around $2,500.
The bottom line is the value of the home wouldn’t make much, if any, difference in savings dollar-wise. But the lower your home value, the larger percentage of savings you would see.
That’s all, of course, if local counties don’t raise the millage rates and the homes don’t go up in value. After 2028, the exemption would be increased from $250,000 based on the rate of inflation.
And keep in mind the exact savings would depend on where you live and the assessed value of your home.
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