A previous version of this story misspelled the name of Jon Whiten. It has since been changed to reflect the correct spelling.
Despite Florida's reputation as a low-tax state, a 2024 study found Florida residents with an income of $19,600 pay a larger share of their income in state and local taxes than the 1% of California residents with incomes over $800,000. Similarly, Floridians with moderate incomes pay 3.5 times the rate paid by the top 1%.
Now, with the Trump administration proposing new tax policies and tax cuts and Gov. Ron DeSantis calling for Florida’s property taxes to be abolished, taxpayers are left wondering how potential changes could impact their day-to-day lives.
Florida is among the states with the lowest tax burden, according to the State of Florida website. Most taxes collected in Florida include:
- Sales and use tax, which is currently 6%
- Intangible tax, which is a local tax used to support local governments
- Corporate income taxes, which tax the profits of a corporation that generate revenue for a government
Florida is one of nine states without an income tax, or the percentage of money an individual pays to the state government based on the income made at the place of work, according to a 2021 report by TurboTax.
Regressive taxes
Esteban Santis, a policy analyst at the Florida Policy Institute, said Florida has the most regressive tax structure in the country. The Florida Policy Institute is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization promoting policies and budgets that uplift Florida residents’ economic mobility, according to its website.
A regressive tax is a “tax that takes a larger percentage of income from low-income groups than from high-income groups,” according to the Internal Revenue Service.
Florida is ranked as the state with the most inequitable tax code because of its dependence on sales taxes at the state level and property taxes at the local level, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Santis said.
“Households that make less than $40,000 a year, those are the households that we see are struggling the most,” Santis said. “And those are the households that are overburdened by our sales tax code and also our property tax code.”
Based in Washington, D.C., ITEP is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank analyzing federal and state tax policies. In its 2024 report titled “Who Pays,” it noted how the regressiveness of Florida’s local and state taxes “requires a much greater share of income from low- and middle-income families than from wealthy families.”
Specifically, low-income families pay almost five times as much as the wealthy, according to ITEP’s report. Similarly, wealthy families are disproportionately white, while low- to moderate-income families are disproportionately families of color, Santis said.
But taxes aren’t necessarily dictated by one person — like DeSantis; instead, tax policy is often determined by the state’s electorate or policy makers, Santis said. A supermajority, or over two-thirds, is required in the Florida House and Senate to approach raising taxes.
Similarly, if there are tax change proposals impacting Florida’s constitution, 60% of the electorate’s approval is required to alter the constitution.
Property taxes
Jamie Taylor, a 25-year-old marketing coordinator at an equipment rental company and Florida resident, said she’s been most affected by the state’s property taxes. She’s actively looking to buy a home but is concerned with the possibility of paying more “out-of-pocket.”
Taylor, who currently resides in Jacksonville, said the median property tax rate there is 0.77%. The median home value in Jacksonville is between $200,000 and $300,000 — which translates to over $2,000 or $3,000 in property taxes annually.
Property tax is a county tax based on the assessed value of a property. Florida’s property tax rate is about 0.82%, which is lower than the U.S. average by .08%, according to Smart Asset’s Florida Property calculator. Property taxes also fund public schools and infrastructure.
The median 2024 property tax in Florida was $3,101, which was a 9.5% increase over the prior year and a 47.5% increase from 2019. South Florida also saw the biggest increase in property taxes — counties like Miami-Dade and Broward saw 56.8% increases since 2019, according to a 2025 report by Housing Wire.
On Feb. 13, DeSantis took to X to share his hope to abolish or reform property taxes, deeming them a “more oppressive and ineffective form of taxation.”
While Taylor said she is part of the middle class, she doesn’t believe abolishing property taxes is “a reasonable thing to do;” instead, property taxes should be restructured.
“The average homeowner shouldn’t have to be taxed more, or accept property taxes that are raised here,” Taylor said.
Though property taxes are another regressive tax structure, a 2025 report by the Florida Policy Institute found eliminating property tax revenue would weaken Florida’s local governments and impact the lower- to moderate-class tax bracket.
The report also noted local governments would lose fiscal autonomy, individuals could have their income taxes increased and the state government would have to further consider local funding needs.
Property taxes serve as a way to raise revenue for “local governments to finance schools, roads, parks, police protection and firefighting services.”
Potential federal impact
Haidi Salihovic works within the bioinformation field in forensics. The 25-year-old moved to North Carolina from Florida last year after getting a job offer — while living in Florida, she was in the lower-income tax bracket. Salihovic said being in North Carolina opened her up to experiencing positive changes in how taxes are used for the community, like fixing sidewalks and funding museums, which she felt like she didn’t experience in Florida.
But beyond Florida, federal tax changes have impacted Salihovic’s line of work. The Trump administration's recent pause on research funding on the federal level has left her and her colleagues stuck on what could come next.
Much of federal funding, like grants, comes from taxes, such as individual income tax, corporate income tax and payroll taxes. A 2025 report from the Tax Policy Center outlined how, on average, federal grants “constitute about one-third of total state funding.”
In 2022, Florida received about $54.4 billion of its total revenue from federal grants, according to a state revenue calculation by Pew.
Salihovic's main line of research includes massacre studies — a broader term for research that aids in identifying people who were buried in mass graves or sequencing DNA and performing genealogical analysis to determine who an unidentified person is.
Federal funding helped aid this research, but without it, there’s no telling what may happen moving forward, she said. Similarly, many of her friends working on getting their doctoral degrees have had their funding grants dropped and are now struggling to find resources.
“I love this line of work because I can see how much it impacts people, and that’s been really sad to see,” Salihovic said. “These were things that were generally important to a lot of people, and we’re just seeing less funding for them.”
Jon Whiten, ITEP’s deputy director, said U.S. Congress and the Trump administration are focused on passing big tax legislation this year. Specifically, Republicans hope to extend previous tax policies from Trump’s first term, which would give the biggest tax cut to the wealthy, Whiten said.
Republicans argue extending the tax policies, which are set to expire this year, would increase revenue.
On Feb. 12, the Republican-controlled U.S. House Budget Committee voted to advance a budget blueprint allowing about $4.5 trillion in tax cuts.
Similarly, any changes implemented to tariffs have the potential to impact all taxpayers. While some tariffs can be useful in a targeted way, tariffs across the board create a sales tax on everyone, Whiten said.
“Sales tax is the most regressive tax that's out there,” Whiten said. “Low-income people [and] middle-income people have to pay most of it.”
Another proposal from the Trump administration includes tax exemptions for income derived from tips. Though it could benefit people working in the service industry, it has the potential to be misused. For instance, high-priced accountants or law firms could turn some of their regular billable hours into tipped income, creating a potential loophole to avoid taxes for those in a higher income bracket, Whiten said.
“There's better ways to help people who are struggling, who are in the service industry” Whiten said. “Refundable tax credits, like the income tax credit in particular, [are] very good. One tax credit, if they have no families, is also extremely effective.”
Elon Musk, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, recently pushed for access to taxpayers’ personal information through the IRS.
The request has been blocked by a federal judge as of Feb. 21, but if it were reinstated, it may pose a risk to taxpayers nationally, Whiten said.
ITEP’s tax microsimulation model also found households of color overall tend to face higher consumption tax rates, on average, than white households. Similarly, a 2024 report by ITEP found a total of $96.7 billion in taxes were paid by undocumented immigrants in the U.S. — Florida specifically raised about $1.8 billion in tax revenue from undocumented immigrants.
Florida is among the states with the largest population of immigrants living in the country illegally, according to a 2024 report by Pew Research.
“Any kind of mass deportation ground is not only gonna really harm communities and kind of rip families apart — it's gonna hurt the tax base,” Whiten said. “It's gonna lead to less revenue. That's both at the federal level and at the state, local level.”
Contact Vivienne Serret at vserret@alligator.org Follow her on X @vivienneserret.
Vivienne Serret is a UF journalism and criminology senior, serving as the Fall 2024 race and equity reporter for The Alligator's Enterprise desk. She previously worked as a columnist and previously reported for The Alligator's university desk as the student government reporter. She loves karaoke and lifting at the gym.
