Florida has no state income tax. That's the headline. But the property tax system — the mechanism that funds schools, fire departments, roads, and everything else local government does — is more complex than most buyers realize, and the differences between getting it right and getting it wrong can add up to tens of thousands of dollars over a typical holding period.
This guide covers the four things that actually matter: millage rates, homestead exemption, Save Our Homes, and portability. We built a Florida property tax calculator that models all four — use it alongside this guide to see the numbers for your specific scenario.
Florida property tax is deceptively simple in formula and deceptively complex in practice:
Annual Tax = Taxable Value × Total Millage Rate ÷ 1,000
Each of those terms hides important detail.
| County | Approximate Total Millage | Annual Tax on $500K Home (no exemptions) |
|---|---|---|
| Miami-Dade | ~21.5 mills | ~$10,750 |
| Broward | ~19.5 mills | ~$9,750 |
| Palm Beach | ~20.0 mills | ~$10,000 |
| Orange (Orlando) | ~19.0 mills | ~$9,500 |
| Monroe (Keys) | ~15.5 mills | ~$7,750 |
If the property is your permanent, primary residence as of January 1, you qualify for Florida's homestead exemption. It reduces the assessed value in two steps:
Net effect: roughly $700–$1,200 per year in savings, depending on your county's total millage. Not transformative on a $2M home, but on a $400K condo it's a meaningful reduction in monthly carrying cost.
This is where the real money is. Once you claim homestead, your property's assessed value cannot increase by more than 3% per year (or the Consumer Price Index, whichever is lower) — regardless of how much the market value increases.
In a market that appreciates 5–7% annually, the gap between assessed value and market value grows every year. After 10 years of 6% market appreciation:
This is the single biggest tax benefit of long-term homeownership in Florida. It's also the reason long-held homesteaded properties in appreciating neighborhoods carry dramatically lower tax bills than newly purchased homes on the same street — and why selling triggers a meaningful tax event for the next buyer.
If you sell your homesteaded Florida property and buy another one within two tax years (effectively about three calendar years), you can transfer up to $500,000 of your accumulated Save Our Homes benefit to the new property.
Your "portability benefit" is the difference between your old property's market value and its assessed value at the time of sale. If your old home had a market value of $800K and an assessed value of $500K, you have a $300K portability benefit.
On your new home (say, $700K purchase), the assessed value starts at $700K minus the portable benefit ($300K) = $400K assessed value in year one. That's a substantial tax reduction from day one — you're paying tax on $400K instead of $700K.
File Form DR-501T with your new county's property appraiser within 25 days of the homestead application deadline. Your closing attorney or title company should prompt this, but verify — missing the deadline forfeits the benefit permanently.
Portability is the reason seasoned Florida homeowners can downsize, upsize, or relocate across counties without losing decades of accumulated tax savings. If you're buying your second Florida home, this is the most important tax conversation you'll have.
The most common tax surprise for Florida buyers:
Use our Florida property tax calculator to model your specific scenario — enter the purchase price, select the county, toggle homestead on or off, and see the projected tax bill, homestead savings, and 10-year Save Our Homes trajectory.
For property-specific data — including current assessed value, historical tax assessments, exemption status, and building details — search any address on Broker One.
Broker One Research is the data-journalism arm of Broker One. Every post under this byline is backed by an original SQL analysis across our proprietary datasets: 2M Florida parcels from county appraisers, 4.6M active and historical MLS listings, 6.9M Florida business entities from Sunbiz, FEMA flood zones, building permits, code violations, and Census ACS demographics. We publish our methodology — row counts, filters, date ranges — so readers can evaluate the rigor of every finding. We use median-based metrics rather than means to keep MLS data-entry outliers out of headline numbers. If you're a journalist or researcher who wants to cite our work, email research@mybrokerone.com.
