Research Symposium

BIO

Hi, my name is Jack White and I’m currently studying psychology with an interest in public policy here at FSU, over the last six months my research group and I have been investigating the homestead exemption take-up rate gap in Florida and how this may affect homeowners. Basically what that means is in our study we used targeted interventions to determine whether certain populations were more or less likely than one another to take advantage of a benefit that could potentially save homeowners thousands of dollars. We aim to determine what demographics are least likely to sign up and what strategies are most effective in making these benefits available to all homeowners. In order to accomplish this, we sent out thousands of mailers to each county in Florida reminding homeowners of the exemption, as well as a second treatment group which had the option for a text reminder before the exemption’s deadline. Although our results are pending, we predict that each subsequent group will offer an improvement in take-up rate. What this means is that we are taking steps forward in improving public policy at the state level by determining strategies to make tax benefits more widely available.

Closing the Gap in Homestead Exemption Participation Take-up Rates

Abstract

This research examines the effects of letter reminders and text message reminders on the take-up rate for the homestead exemption. This is being investigated to find policy implications and methods to close the take-up rate gap of the Homestead exemption.
Information is gathered by mailing letters to homeowners who are eligible but have not signed up for the homestead exemption. In this letter, we offer text message reminders that could be signed up for. Using the participant's information, data is gathered, and demographic information is produced.
We each produced 3000 letters to be mailed to eligible non-participants. The expected results are that text message reminders and letter reminders will be greatly effective at getting nonparticipants to sign up for the homestead exemption.
The significance of the expected result is that there is an issue with the government's communication of homestead exemption, which may affect areas that typically use fewer realtors and areas that have less access to the internet. This shows the need for a policy that will communicate information about the homestead exemption to those who may be less likely to have access to that information.

Keywords: Economics, Public Policy, Tax Policy, Homestead