2013 Winter Newsletter

at least 25 years, (c) reached 65 years old on or before January 1 st of the year they seek the exemption, (d) limited household income, and (e) market value less than $250,000. If qualified, this exemption will be equal to the assessed value of the property as it relates to the respective tax levies of the grant- ing county or city. For either additional exemption to be available to taxpayers, counties and cities must adopt an ordinance to allow the exemption and deliver the ordinance to the Property Appraiser no later than December 1st of the year prior to the year the additional exemption will take effect. Though the amendment did nothing to change the existing LIS exemption, the implementing language in section 196.075, F.S., presents a problem since the legislature erred by failing to properly state that the amount of the existing exemption is ―up to‖ $50,000 – it now states the exemption is a flat $50,000.

As a result, a ―housekeeping‖ bill will need to be introduced during the 2013 legislative session to fix this language. Until then, those counties with existing ordinances should be governed by the language in Article VII, section 6 of the Florida Constitution. As to the second LIS exemption, the effective date of this amendment is January 8, 2013, so the first year it will be available is 2014.

There will be a plethora of programming and processing issues that will impact Property Appraiser staff. Scott Tussing from the Manatee County Property Appraiser‘s office has written to the DOR with several questions and concerns. If you are interested in reading Scott‘s memorandum, you can email him at scott.tussing@mymanatee.org and he can send you a copy. There should be lots of discussion over the next several months as it relates to this change.

Article Contributor: Dianne Johns, Attorney, CFE

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Winter 2013 Newsletter of the FCIAAO