Florida snowbirds challenge fairness of 2-tier tax

ST. LUCIE COUNTY, Fla. -- May 23, 2006 -- In late March, hundreds of Florida homeowners jammed the chambers of county commissioners in Fort Pierce to protest rising property taxes. Ed McIntosh, a 75-year-old retiree, showed up with a foot-tall stack of complaints from homeowners, 623 letters in all.

He read a batch of them aloud, one tale after another of seasonal residents juggling rising insurance costs, hurricane-repair bills and escalating property taxes, which have more than doubled in five years in parts of the state.

Such protests have become commonplace in Florida as the state's snowbirds -- winter residents, who are mostly retirees from the Northeast, Midwest and Canada -- fight back against a tax system they believe is unfair and onerous. Mr. McIntosh, a retired Ford Motor Co. finance manager who lives in Beulah, Mich., spends four months a year along the Atlantic coast in Jensen Beach. He complains that seasonal residents are "being discriminated against ... We're carrying the state on our backs."

http://www.planetrealtor.com/florida/news/daily/news.cfm?article=n2-05232006