Independent Audit Blasts Disney For Pulling ‘Bait And Switch’ On Florida: ‘A Mousetrap’

[Disneychick13]

Well, I’ve tried googling and can’t find a definitive source. There’s no doubt that Disney pays taxes; I just can’t find an independent source that shows how much, if any, Disney saves due to the district. I’ll go back and reread BCLA’s earlier posts and see if I can figure those numbers out.

So I think that Disney world pays property taxes that are assessed by Orange and Osceola counties. The tax assessments don’t have anything to do with the special district (RCID or CFTOD). They shouldn’t pay more or less taxes no matter who is in charge of the district. I believe that would only change if the district was completely dissolved (which has not happened). I think that is correct because it doesn’t make logical sense why the amount of property taxes would be determined by a district that has no power to assess property taxes. I could be wrong here but I think that’s the gist of it.

 

[bcla]

So I think that Disney world pays property taxes that are assessed by Orange and Osceola counties. The tax assessments don’t have anything to do with the special district (RCID or CFTOD). They shouldn’t pay more or less taxes no matter who is in charge of the district. I believe that would only change if the district was completely dissolved (which has not happened). I think that is correct because it doesn’t make logical sense why the amount of property taxes would be determined by a district that has no power to assess property taxes. I could be wrong here but I think that’s the gist of it.

It's a bit more complicated than that. The way it works is that the county assessor provides an assessed value and that is applied to any taxing authority. There might also be exemptions that reduce the assessed value and/or tax liability.

Each taxing authority comes up with a proposed budget, and once that's approved the assessor calculates a single tax rate for all taxpayers that will cover that budget. Look at the last table I posted, and there are 9 different taxing authorities including Orange County and the city of Orlando.

The new CFTOD taxes will depend on the budget approved by the board. Don't know if they're necessarily higher or lower than what was under RCID, but my reading of the new tax bills is that they separate it into operating expenses and debt service, when RCID listed a single entry. But I'm assuming the statutory limit is the same 30 mills (3%) that RCID was allowed by law.

If the district were dissolved without a replacement, it's assumed that the liabilities for district debt would accrue to the counties. Then it would get crazy negotiating for how the services that were done by the district would be represented. The one backstop that Disney would have then is the cities of Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista, which could conceivably take over services and be much more difficult for the state to dissolve like they did the previous district.

 

[HokieRaven5]

If the district were dissolved without a replacement, it's assumed that the liabilities for district debt would accrue to the counties. Then it would get crazy negotiating for how the services that were done by the district would be represented. The one backstop that Disney would have then is the cities of Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista, which could conceivably take over services and be much more difficult for the state to dissolve like they did the previous district.

Yeah this is where Disney may have been annoyed it happened, but could’ve been content for the dissolution to occur. You tell a company they would no longer possibly be on the hook for nearly a $Billion in bond debt and the caveat is now all of the services previously provided by a district you primarily funded now falls to the counties and your burden is now split amongst taxpayers of Orange/Osceola county, yeah a lot of companies take that deal. There was a lot of conversation on these boards last year wondering why Disney wasn’t taking any actions about the dissolution of the district.

It’s when it transitioned to a full government takeover of the district that Disney started to act and went ahead with the development agreement and restrictive covenants in order to do what they believed to be protecting their business interests from the whims of the state. Whether folks agree with that or not is certainly open to debate or opinion, but it wasn’t until the district was reconfigured and those agreements were deemed illegal/null and void that Disney finally decided to take this matter to court.