The latest real estate article in the Orlando Sentinel dated 7/30/07 is that the small guys are being shafted in the property tax cuts because the big corporations like Disney, Universal, and Progress Energy are getting the bulk of the tax breaks. What they fail to point out in the article is that these big corporations pay far more in property taxes than anybody else. Obviously if Disney's taxes went up by $15 million and the average homeowner's taxes only went up by $1,000, the tax break has to go somewhere (the Sentinel article fails to disclose to anyone how much the taxes actually increased in the last 5 years). The little guy cannot get his tax bill trimmed by $6 million, duh. This to me is typical class warfare. Apparently the writer of the article believes the average Sentinel reader cannot do basic math. Additonally the big corporations get forced to raise their prices because of this increased overhead and thus the little guys get to pay more for those services as well.

On the other hand though, I think the tax breaks for everybody were far too small. The legislature needs to roll back the tax rolls to 2003 or further and the counties and cities need to roll back their budgets accordingly. There is plenty of government fat that can be trimmed.