While Byron Donalds hasn’t received the backing of Gov. Ron DeSantis in his quest to succeed him as governor of Florida next year, the U.S. House member from Naples has no problem showering the love on the state’s chief executive.
“We have the best governor in America right now,” Donalds said Saturday during a campaign appearance in Tampa. “I don’t play political games. He’s the best. We have to build on what he has done and take our state to a whole ‘nother level.”
Donalds, the Trump-endorsed early frontrunner for the Republican nomination for governor next year, got deep into policy prescriptions while addressing a crowd of at least 150 people who gathered at La Teresita, a Cuban eatery in the city’s Hispanic district.
The candidate spent nearly half of his hour-long visit answering questions submitted in advance by members of the audience.
The Property Tax Issue
One such query asked whether he would support a proposal on the 2026 November ballot to eliminate or substantially reduce property taxes “without all the legal jargon where one can understand in simple terms what they’re voting for?”
“That second part is going to be really hard,” Donalds immediately responded.
“Would I love to eliminate property taxes? Yes,” he said. However: “If we eliminate property taxes in the state of Florida, we’d have to double the sales tax.”
He went on to say that doubling the 6% sales tax statewide would lead to a decrease in tourism from working people and thus isn’t a real option (the co-chair of the select committee in the Florida House studying the issue has already said that the total elimination of property taxes is a non-starter).
Instead, Donalds offered a couple of remedies — included raising the homestead exemption from $50,000 to between $300,000 and $400,000.
“So, you do that on homesteaded property, and then you create a harder cap that would have to apply for the school taxes,” he said. “Because Save Our Homes and all the other homesteaded exemptions do not apply to school districts. They only apply to the cities and the counties. … It has to apply to [school] districts as well to see a real decrease in property taxes.”
Another suggestion he made was that the millage rate assessed by local governments should instead be set by the county tax collector.
And he said that if elected he would continue the DOGE efforts enacted by Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia. “Everybody’s budget is going to be examined. Every year. All the time. Not just local. But state as well.”
He called the idea of property tax reform a step in the right direction, ultimately, “because at the end of the day, we can’t have people being priced out of their homes. We can’t have it. I don’t care what project you got going on in your local government. If you’re pricing people out, then guess what? That’s a bad project. You need to go back to the drawing board.”