Amendment 3's Other Side: The Tax Cut Built for Homeowners Could Boomerang on Commercial Owners - and Renters

Amendment 3 has been sold, all fall, as a homeowner's measure - a homestead exemption rising to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028. The commercial real estate industry's own trade paper spent Election Day eve asking what the measure does to everyone else. 'Beware, it looks favorable but there's more to' the amendment, Ken Rios, a tax principal at the Kaufman Rossin law firm in Fort Lauderdale, told Commercial Observer - and Rios, by his own account, has still not decided how he will vote.

The mechanics cut two ways. Non-homestead property - commercial buildings and second homes - gets something real: the cap on annual assessment increases falls from 10 percent to 5 percent. But if the tax base from primary homes shrinks, local governments grow more dependent on the commercial base that remains, and the responses available to them are millage rates and fees. 'Sort of like whack-a-mole,' Neil Schiller of Government Law Group said - reduce property taxes in one place and fees for service rise in another. The Tax Foundation's Jared Walczak put a number on the renter's share: multifamily tax bills could rise nearly 15 percent, about $406 per unit, costs landlords would probably pass through to tenants.

The statewide frame is the one Tallahassee's own analysts drew: a local-government revenue shortfall of $4.6 billion in 2027, $8.4 billion the year after and nearly $12 billion by 2032, with the amendment itself silent on how cities and counties fill it - Governor DeSantis has said the state could provide grants. Supporters answer that the measure 'is about affordability for the people who currently live here,' in the words of Danielle Blake of Miami Realtors, whose parent Florida Realtors backs it; newcomers after December 31 must wait five years to qualify for the expanded exemption. The last public reading, an October University of North Florida poll, had 50 percent of likely voters supporting the measure and 14 percent undecided - short, on paper, of the 60 percent it needs on Tuesday. Escambia County has already priced its own share of the question at $94 million over two years; Tuesday decides whether the bill comes due.