Solar power won't raise homes' tax value, property appraiser says

Sep 5 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Steve Patterson The Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville

Outfitting a house with solar power panels might cost you $40,000.

But it won't raise your tax bill a dime, Property Appraiser Jim Overton is telling Duval County homeowners.

The appraiser's office boiled that assurance down to a form letter last month as solar power owners wrote in, worried they faced hundreds of dollars in extra property taxes for going green.

Relax, Overton is telling them.

"It's like it's not there, for tax purposes," he said. Despite the cost of many power systems, Overton said he has no evidence solar panels raise a home's resale value.

"Until we get some direction from the Legislature, we're just not going to do anything," he said.

The taxes on renewable power systems became an oddly hot topic this summer after news coverage outlined one man's plan to sue for a tax exemption. Networking between solar owners spread the word that an exemption written into state law was undone by a quirk in a constitutional amendment meant to support renewable power, and that lawmakers hadn't fixed the problem.

"I've been on a letter-writing campaign, getting the solar owners knowledgeable about it. And it has worked. We have been writing senators and representatives," said Norma Stefanik, who had 28 solar panels mounted last year on her Westside Jacksonville home.

She said her $38,000 system, which was eligible for federal and state financial incentives, is designed to save $1,200 to $1,500 yearly on power bills. But paying taxes on the system could cost her $750 per year.

"That would mean the tax collector would get 50-plus percent of our savings. That would not be a deal that make solar worthwhile," she said.

Overton said he never factored solar units into home values before but looked closer at the subject this year. He said appraisers in Hillsborough and Orange counties have taken the same no-price approach as his office.

He said his office is thinking about whether to record renewable power systems in notes kept on each property.

A JEA program to let property owners sell back power from their systems has about 50 homeowners and a dozen businesses enrolled, but the amount of power they generate varies by day and by season, utility spokeswoman Gerri Boyce said. Because of differences in systems and customers' power use, Boyce said there's no way to measure a typical savings on utility bills among those property owners.

Despite Overton's decision, homeowner Bill Bright said he still expects to sue both the appraiser's office and the state for a tax exemption on his solar panels, which cost $40,000.

He said the suit is partly about finding a way to make Florida's Legislature follow through on the intent of a constitutional change voters approved in November 2008. That measure change repealed an existing solar exemption but described an exemption that was meant to replace it, once the Florida Legislature passed an enacting law.

That law was never passed, and Bright says lawmakers "dropped the ball" on a measure the public approved.

"Once the [estimated] 23,836 solar owners in the state of Florida ... find out they're eligible for a property tax exemption and the Legislature dropped the ball," Bright said, "the lawsuit will become very interesting."

steve.patterson@jacksonville.com,

(904) 359-4263