Florida Property Tax News: City of Miami Beach Repeats Illegal Dividend to Homestead Property Owners

A few weeks ago, 160,000 City of Miami Beach homestead-exempt property owners received a $300 "dividend" check in the mail.

This repeats, compounds, and mulitplies the illegal rebate of taxes to the same property owners in 2006.

This measure may curry favor with the voters in an election year, but it is flagrantly unlawful, in the humble opinion of this blogger. Interested in whay it is illegal? Read on.

The so-called "dividend" is essentially a tax refund or after-the-fact diminution in the tax rate, made available to only a portion of the population of City of Miami Beach taxpayers. In the alternative, this is a 50% increase in the homestead exmption exclusively for City of Miami Beach homestead taxpayers to the exclusion of residents of each of the other 34 municipalities in the County. Any way you look at it--rebate, exception to the uniform millage rate in the juruisdiction or increased homestead exemption--it violates the state Constitution and is illegal.


To their credit, the City is completely upfront about the differential tax rate. Or at least it was when Mayor David Dermer first introduced this feel-good provision during the budget hearings in September 2005. That was the time of the year when every city and county and school board and water managaement district and every other taxing authtority looked at its budget and set its millage, i.e., tax rate for the year. The budget resolution actually specifies the amount of the slight reduction in millage for this select group of taxpayers eligible for the tax refund.

The only trouble with this measure is that the Florida Constitution mandates a uniform tax rate for each and every taxpayer in the jusrisdiction. Under that standard, it's constitutionally impermissible to levy 23.3218 mills against all the property on the City of Miami Beach EXCEPT homestead property, and then effectively apply to those voters--whoops, I mean taxpayers, of course--a smidgen lower millage rate, ginned up in the form of a "dividend."

Well, this raises the specter of the old philosophical exercise: "what if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it? Is there still a sound?" This time, the question morphs into: "what if the City issues an unlawful dividend of $300 to each of 160,000 taxpayers and no one complains about it? Is it still a violation?"

What about homeowners who don't have homestead exemption? And what about the commercial property owners? Did they get anything back? No. But government decisionmaking is all about figuring out where to draw the lines, who gets included and who gets excluded, after all, isn't it?Is it being too cynical to point out that the homestead exemption statute expressly cross-refernces the voters' registration statute? Cynical? Who, me?

Frankly, this is why it's helpful not just to know the law, but know when certain nominal violations may be ignored by local government. This doesnt apply just to property tax. It applies in code enforcement, zoning, traffic enforcement, you name it. That's probably why a local judge once said, "An ounce of experience is worth a pound of law."Well, that's about enough philosophizing for one blog entry. That's all for now.
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Daniel A. Weiss has over 26 years experience as a Florida property tax attorney. Daniel Weiss was named in the 2007 Annual Edition of the South Florida Legal Guide as one of the top lawyers in the practice areas of both Real Estate - Land Use, Zoning & Environmental and Real Estate - Commercial. For a free consultation regarding your property, contact Click here: http://www.tannebaumweiss.com/property_tax.php