Voters Hold the Key: Lock-in, Mobility and the Portability of Property Tax Exemptions

We examine support for a recent and novel Florida referendum to allow home owners with existing assessment caps to “port” their exemption to a new residence. Employing a rich dataset of all Florida real property, census-block data and precinct level voting results, we find that support for the law change was greater in high-mobility and high exemption precincts. Support was also greater in cities with more out-of-state migration or containing more second homes. Within cities, a precinct’s mobility relative to the rest of the city was more predictive suggesting that voters were savvy to the tax-share implications of the amendment.