Too_Many_Tools writes:

In Palm Beach County, Fla.,

As a Palm Beach County resident and homeowner/homesteader, I can testify
that this article doesn't even count some of the most irrational
factors.

(1) Property taxes in Florida are paid in arrears. This means the
assessments during a market crash are still based on market bubble
conditions. You are in effect taxed for hypothetical property value
that you never realized and which no longer exists even hypothetically.

(2) Assessments are based not on the value of the property as much as on
the history of ownership ("Save Our Homes" 3 percent/year increase
limit) and a long-passed hypothetical/unrealized bubble value. Prices
crashed to 0.4X their bubble peak, yet assessments do not follow, even
when an actual sale realizes the true market value, because then the
whole neighborhood of comparable properties would likewise have to be
reassessed to reflect the truth. So this fantasy value is perpetuated
statewide, because truth would shift the property tax burdens around,
and shifting is the least politically desirable thing. Assessments are
systemically unsound, and there is no system reset button. Assessments
have always been criticized for being noisy, but this is an entirely
different class of madness, with arbitrary winners and losers, and
consequent contempt for taxation and politicians. It's like that
experiment where they give 10 IRS agents the same tax situation and they
come up with 10 different answers, but far, far worse. The same
properties on the same block vary as much as 3:1 in taxes.

(3) Most of the property tax goes to the teachers union, and politically
there is no way they will allow anything but a nominal budget cut.