Impact fee increase is unreasonable

Miracles do happen. Politicians have found a tax that makes voters happy.

The “happy tax” is an impact fee on new homes and businesses. In Citrus County, that tax is about to be increased to $17,000 for a new single-family home. At the same time, the tax on new businesses will be increased to the point where any small entity will have to pay more than $100,000 just to open the front door of a new building.

Impact fees are “happy taxes” because the politicians have convinced naïve citizens that this is an easy way to get the other guy to pay a larger portion of the collective tax bill.

We believe the Citrus County Commission is being too aggressive in raising its impact fee rates. The impact taxes serve a purpose, but they need to be reasonable. They should not be used to create an artificial barrier to keep new people and businesses from moving to our community. And they should not be so high that young people looking for a starter home or seniors looking for a small retirement home can’t afford to pay the unreasonable tax.

All residents of Citrus County should be concerned about this huge tax hike being planned by the county commission and school board because — eventually — we all pay for the higher taxes.

On the home side of the equation, raising the impact fee by $17,000 creates an across-the-board increase in the price of housing. When a home is resold, the seller is going to need $17,000 more just to cover costs. The net result is that we will all pay more for housing.

On the business side, local government is going to raise the cost of goods and services to the consumers of this county. If a new dentist comes to Citrus County and has to pay $250,000 in impact fees to open a new office, those fees will be passed along to consumers.

Each of us — in the long run — ends up paying for this tax hike.

What we really need is a government that is smaller, more responsive and less bureaucratic. We need better planning and a conservative approach to spending.

What we’ve got instead is an unreasonable tax being placed on people and businesses that — for the most part — have no vote in the process. (The nasty secret here is that if you have an existing business that you want to expand, or if you are a homeowner and want to build a new home, you will also be slammed with this inappropriately high tax.)

Florida has a history of making bad tax policy. The impact fee is the latest chapter of something that looks good on the surface, but ends up causing many more serious problems down the road.

What it means to each of us is that local government is once again raising taxes. That story never has a good ending.