In August, property appraisers from all 67 Florida counties will mail Truth in Millage (TRIM) notices to property owners around the state, indicating the 2020 valuation for each property. If not already received, these notices will be waiting in your mailbox shortly. The TRIM notices are sent to the mailing address on record at the property appraiser’s offices, so pay attention if that address is a registered agent or some other less-often-used address. The valuations are also available online now or very soon. As noted above, these TRIM notices show the property tax assessments and market values for 2020, as well as estimated property taxes for this tax year.

Review & Potential Challenge of Property Valuation

Most property types are expected to see increases in valuation based on 2019 financial and market information. Since property owners have only 25 days from the mailing of the TRIM notice to challenge the valuation (market or assessed) on the property, we advise all property owners to carefully review their TRIM notices as soon as they are received. The actual valuation challenge deadline is noted on the TRIM notice.

As with prior years, we recommend that property owners pay close attention to both your assessed values and market values. While assessed values are capped at 10% for non-homestead properties and 3% for homesteaded properties, there is no such limitation on the increase in market values. In other words, your property’s market value can increase significantly, which impacts the taxes you pay for the school board (usually between 40-50% of your total taxes).

Pandemic Impact

With the impacts of the pandemic this year, and budgets being tightened, it will be more important than ever to analyze your valuations and proposed taxes. Despite the closure of many businesses (temporarily or permanently) over the last six months, property values will likely continue to increase. The reason for this is that the date of valuation for the 2020 assessments is January 1, 2020. The effects of the coronavirus were not felt until after this date of valuation, so we will likely not see any change to valuation until 2021 as a result of the financial impact. Nonetheless, we encourage a close review to determine if your property value would be supportable as of that January 1, 2020 date.