- As the Florida Legislative session winds down, there's still no agreement on tax cuts.
- Governor Desantis favors property tax cuts. Some lawmakers back sales tax cuts.
- WATCH THE VIDEO: See how the State Senate president proposes dealing with the impasse.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
We’re quickly running out of session and now we have a third idea on how to help Floridians save.
The Senate President calls his new plan an all of the above approach— while critics think it’s none of the above.
Wednesday, Senate President Ben Albritton chucked his tax cut plan in the growing pile; what he called in a memo: an “all of the above” approach totaling about $750 million in savings.
It would…
- Study how to reduce or end property taxes, potentially putting an idea on the next general election ballot.
- Renew some of the most popular sales tax holidays.
- And permanently cut sales tax on clothing and shoes that cost 75-bucks or less.
(Sen. Ben Albritton, (R) Florida Senate President)
“We're not talking about, you know, folks that are tourists, that may come in and go buy, you know, a $300 jacket, or, you know, things like that. We're, we're, we've aligned this. We believe, at the $75 to where it can help the most number of Floridians.”
Later… Albritton pushed his pitch with reporters…
Though he finds himself out of alignment with the state’s two other big Republicans… who have different ideas…
“I stand by the statement I made to you the other day. We're going to figure out how to land the plane, because I believe Floridians require that of us…”
House Speaker Danny Perez still wants a permanent slice of the sales tax rate for everything by .75%, saving around 5 billion dollars.
He stood by his idea this week… even as some speculate how the chambers will be able to reconcile their plans and their budgets which are billions apart.
(Rep. Danny Perez, (R) Florida House Speaker)
“It's my seventh year here, and every single year right about this time, you start getting the rumors of we're not going to end on time. We're going to be here till June, July. You know, somehow it always ends up getting figured out, and the plane gets, gets the land.”
Then there’s DeSantis— who was asked about the ideas Thursday…
He again said he sign a sales tax cut but reaffirmed he wants property tax relief, pushing his plan to cut $5 billion with a rebate program saving homesteaded homes about $1000 annually.
DeSantis also continuing to throw shade on cutting sales tax.
(Gov. Ron DeSantis, (R) Florida)
“I don't know why you would want to relieve the burden on you know, Brazilians come to Disney and stay for and spend all this money like I want the government funded by our non residents as much as possible. I want to relieve burdens on Floridians and give the burdens to them.”
The three ideas now have some Democrats concerned nothing will get done… or at least nothing major anytime soon.
(Rep. Anna Eskamani, (D) Orlando)
“I think we're all feeling the pressure of time, and it seems more likely every day that we're going to go beyond the end of session, and Sine Die is going to be a different date, just because we're so we're billions of dollars apart on everything right now.”
State Rep. Anna Eskamani said her caucus will continue pushing for things like combined reporting to get more out of big companies using subsidiaries as a tax shelter.
Also a family tax credit rebate to directly benefit those she says need help the most.
But what we’ll actually end up with when the final hankies drop… remains unclear.
And the budget will play into the negotiations big time.
It’ll be a big focus as we get into the remaining weeks of session and — as we noted— right now the two chambers are very far apart with only about three weeks remaining of session.
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