Yesterday, Gov. Ron DeSantis held another media event in Tampa to bash the Florida House—this time over tax cuts.
Basics: DeSantis is offering homeowners one-time, $1,000 property-tax rebates this year and adding a constitutional amendment to cut property taxes on the 2026 ballot. The Florida House has proposed reducing the sales tax rate from 6% to 5.25%.
Kneecapping Ron?
The governor had a unique way of positioning his “Florida First Tax Policy,” asserting that it means “standing up for our own people before we’re standing up for the tourists and the foreigners.” He described the House plan as “the Florida Last Tax Package.”
DeSantis stated any budget that reduced sales taxes would be “dead on arrival.”
- “We are not going to kneecap our ability to provide you property tax relief just so we can give a little bit of a benefit to Canadian tourists,” he said in his toughest voice. “That is not going to happen. So you can take that to the bank.”
Middle Ground
The Florida Senate has not committed to either plan. The Senate has proposed providing a sales-tax exemption on purchases of clothes and shoes valued at $75 or less, rather than an overall cut in the sales-tax rate. A Senate tax package included sales-tax “holidays” and trimming the commercial-lease tax.
Sen. Blaise Ingoglia appeared with DeSantis yesterday. He favors the one-time rebate because it gives property owners relief this year.
“If we get structural property tax reform on the ballot in 2026, people are not going to feel that until 2027 because it has to be voted on and then implemented,” he said. “People are going to pay their tax bills in ’25 and ’26. What happens over the next two years? People are hurting now. They need property tax relief now.”
Historic Sales Tax Cut
The Florida House wants lawmakers to consider a permanent reduction in the sales-tax rate and a cut in the commercial-lease tax during their budget negotiations. House Speaker Danny Perez projected that these measures would return more than $30 billion to the economy over the next decade.
When I interviewed Rep. Alex Andrade in early April, he said House lawmakers were supportive of both tax cuts, but not the one-time rebates. He predicted a conflict with the governor over the sales tax reduction, creating a “savings of hundreds of dollars for every family in Florida every year going forward.”
“For whatever reason, I think because it wasn’t his idea, Gov. DeSantis is railing against it,” he said, noting that Florida residents pay 80% of all sales taxes. “I’ve never seen a conservative Republican governor fight so hard against a permanent tax cut before. It’s just bizarre times here in Tallahassee.”
When he appointed a select committee to review possible language for a property tax amendment in 2026, Speaker Perez chided the governor for not offering specifics and questioned how local governments would pay for police, fire-rescue, infrastructure and other services without property tax revenue.
The News Service of Florida reported that Perez issued a statement yesterday: “If the governor wants to veto that, he’s welcome to explain to the voters why he thinks they do not deserve actual and meaningful tax relief. Maybe the truth is he just wants to spend all of it and be the only one who decides how.”
State Rep. Alex Andrade still supports the sales tax reduction.
“When we’re done with our budget, we will pass for the first time in the nation a permanent cut to a sales tax. We will be the first state in the union to permanently reduce our sales tax revenue,” he said on my podcast earlier this week.
“From my understanding, we’ll be permanently eliminating our business rent tax. We’ll be cutting our budget, reducing our budget, and living even further within our means,” he said. “We will stop this reckless spending that we’ve seen over the past few years. And that’s all due to the leadership of Danny Perez.”