10 Most Taxed Businesses in Miami-Dade County: Study

MIAMI, FL —Three shopping centers and two hotels are among the 10 businesses that paid the highest property taxes in Miami-Dade County last year, according to a new study by COMMERCIALCafé.com. The Dolphin Mall topped the list with a whopping tax bill of $10.7 million followed by Dadeland Mall, which paid $7.4 million. Meanwhile, the iconic Fontainebleau Hotel paid $6.4 million, making it the third most taxed business in the county.

"The taxes include the assessed land value together with the value of the improvements on that land," Adel Dobriban of COMMERCIALCafé.com told Patch. "The taxes include the assessed land value together with the value of the improvements on that land. Tax exempt buildings were not included in our study and neither were properties whose tax value couldn't be verified against official records." (Sign up for our free Daily Newsletters and Breaking News Alerts for the Miami Patch.)

The Southeast Financial Center in Downtown Miami ranked fourth with a $5.6 Million tax bill followed by Aventura Mall, which paid $5.2 million last year.

Dobriban said that the data was drawn from PropertyShark, a sister company of COMMERCIALCafé.com. The information was verified with the Miami-Dade Tax Collector website for accuracy, she said.

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"Some of the contenders on our top 10 list command much higher taxes than you’d expect–higher than the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles, which paid roughly $4.3 million in taxes last year, or the Transamerica Pyramid Center in San Francisco, which paid $2.8 million," the study found.

The Miami Center office building ranked sixth with a 2016 tax bill of $4.5 million followed by Loews Miami Beach Hotel, which paid $4.3 million to rank seventh. The 701 Brickell office building paid the eighth most in taxes at $4.1 million. Ninth and tenth place went to the Wells Fargo Center office building at $3.6 million and 1450 Brickell at $3.7 million.

The Miami-Dade report is part of a series of such reports in major cities across the U.S by COMMERCIALCafé.com. Florida amended its constitution in 2008 to institute a 10 percent cap rate on commercial property assessments, the study said. Under Amendment 1, all non-homestead property in Florida are assessed at market value only while the year-over-year increase in this value is capped at 10 percent. COMMERCIALCafé.com said that the assessed value of a commercial property cannot exceed its market value in Florida.

"It’s been nearly 10 years since the measure was adopted, so we thought we’d head south to see which Miami-Dade County buildings paid the highest property taxes in 2016," the report said. "Though no Florida properties made our top 100 nationwide taxpaying buildings list, that doesn’t mean that property owners in the county have it easy when it comes to taxes."

For more details about each building and downloadable raw data click here.

Photo courtesy of COMMERCIALCafé.com