I’m Homestead. I don’t need another unfair advantage.

In their continuing war on property taxes, Florida Republican lawmakers have added Amendment 5 on the November ballot to index the homestead exemption to inflation.

A yes vote means that each year the second of two $25,000 exemptions will increase based on the previous year’s inflation rate. If inflation increased by 3.5% this year (roughly where it is today), your homeownership exemption would increase by $875. Cities and counties would lose more than $100 million per year by 2028, and more thereafter. School taxes are not affected since the second property exemption does not apply to them.

Intuitively, an increase makes sense: why not take inflation into account? One wishes lawmakers would think the same about the gas tax or unemployment benefits, neither of which have been increased in three decades. But the homestead exemption doesn’t need any further fattening. It must be reformed. It is unfair and punitive in its current form. This is not a tax reduction. It’s another tax transfer. The inflation system will widen disparities to the detriment of local governments, businesses, tenants and agricultural properties, all of whom will have to compensate for lost revenue.

The farm already has built-in inflation protection. It’s called the Save Our Homes Amendment. Voters approved it in a referendum in 1992. It limits annual increases in a home’s assessed value to 3 percent or the previous year’s inflation rate, whichever is lower. The longer you live in a homestead, the less you pay when inflation is calculated. Someone who just moved across the street may be paying double or triple what you pay for a smaller house. We have absurd situations like this all over Palm Coast.

Take my street. I bought my 3,000 square foot house in 2008 for the ridiculous price of $175,000. In 2011, its assessed value was $103,000. Since then, its market value has doubled. But my assessed value is only $11,000 more, or $114,000. In constant 2011 dollars, my taxable value has fallen 18 percent, to $84,000. If my assessed value had kept up with inflation, it should have been $147,000, bringing local governments their fair share of additional revenue.

Last year we paid $2,156 in overall taxes, less than in 2011, when we paid $2,149. In constant 2011 dollars, we paid $1,580. In other words, we paid 27 percent less in taxes, when adjusted for inflation. That’s how much purchasing power local governments lost through my taxes over those years: 27 percent. And you wonder why our governments seem like beggars and why their services are lacking all the time.

My neighbors across the street moved into their new 2,300 square foot house last year. Smaller house, almost three times the assessed value of mine: $280,000. They’re in for a shock when they get their tax bill later this year: $5,200, or 140% more than mine. This is the amount they will pay from now on, since our system practically freezes our tax bills from the day we start paying them.

They own a farm. Businesses and tenants do not benefit from this exemption. Their taxes keep rising – yes, renters pay taxes, and in fact, proportionately more taxes than homeowners – with an annual cap of only 10 percent on assessed value. Commercial properties and tenants subsidize everyone else’s artificially low taxes.

Homeownership exemptions were designed to encourage homeownership in difficult economies (the jury is out not anymore unanimous regarding if owning is a good ideanot to mention a possible idea for young people). Florida passed its first homestead exemption for up to $5,000 in 1934to counter the effects of the Depression. It was increased to $25,000 in 1980. The state raised the sales tax from 4 to 5 percent two years later, with half of the revenue from the extra penny promised to cities and counties to make up the loss of income due to the greater exemption.

In 2008, voters approved doubling the exemption, to $50,000. Lost revenue was not made up, which worsened after 1992 when Save Our Homes was passed. Since then, numerous additional and unnecessary exemptions have increased benefits – for the elderly, for the disabled, for an arbitrary set of “essential” workers, as if, say, bank tellers and teachers were worse taxpayers than veterans.

As tax schemes often do, these property exemptions have turned into handouts for those who need them least. They add to the disparities. They discourage the mobility of those who own property (who wants to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in accumulated “tax-protected” value?) and prevent young buyers from accessing homeownership. All of this reduces economic vitality and exacerbates inequalities. Exemptions have metastasized into tumor subsidies that stifle economic activity and government revenue while disproportionately burdening non-owners.

And now Amendment 5. Flagler County Property Appraiser Jay Gardner calls it “unnecessary.” That’s an understatement. It’s another panderer that will deprive local governments of even more resources while pleasing homeowners who will show up at the next council meeting bitching and complaining about potholed roads and shoddy services. This is precisely what a yes vote on Amendment 5 will give you more of.

Pierre Tristam is the editor of FlaglerLive. A version of this piece airs on WNZF.