Property Taxes on Star, Palm & Hibiscus Islands, Explained

Two Governments, One Parcel, Inside the City of Miami Beach

Star Island, Palm Island, and Hibiscus Island are all located within the incorporated City of Miami Beach, in Miami-Dade County -- not an unincorporated county pocket and not a separate municipality of their own, despite their gated, private-road access. That means every owner here pays two layered property tax bills calculated against the same assessed value: a Miami-Dade countywide millage that funds county government, schools, and countywide services, and a City of Miami Beach municipal millage that funds city government, police, fire, and city infrastructure (including the seawall and stormwater programs covered elsewhere on this site). The two are typically combined into a single bill for administrative convenience, but they are set independently by two different elected bodies.

For 2025, Miami-Dade County's total millage runs roughly 17.59 mills countywide, of which about 6.63 mills is earmarked for schools. The City of Miami Beach's FY2026 operating-plus-debt-service millage adds roughly 6.148 mills (reported as 5.8702 mills operating plus 0.2779 mills debt service). Added together, that produces a combined rate near 23.7 mills per $1,000 of assessed value -- this page treats that combined figure as arithmetic on two separately confirmed rates, not as a single officially published number, and it does not include any special district assessment that might separately apply to a specific parcel.

Assessed Value Is Not Sale Price -- and the Gap Can Be Enormous Here

Florida taxes property on assessed value, not market value or sale price, and the two can diverge sharply over time thanks to the state's constitutional assessment caps. In the base year a property receives a Florida homestead exemption, assessed value equals market value; after that, the Save Our Homes cap limits annual assessed-value growth to the lesser of 3% or the change in the Consumer Price Index, regardless of how much market value actually rises. Over a decade or two of South Florida appreciation -- and this market has appreciated dramatically since the 1920s dredge-and-fill era -- the gap between a longtime owner's capped assessed value and current market value can run into the millions of dollars on a property in this price range. That gap resets to full market value whenever the property sells, and a seller moving to another Florida homestead can port up to $500,000 of accumulated savings to a new property under Florida's portability rules.

A meaningful share of ownership on these three islands, however, is not classic owner-occupied homestead property. Second homes, trust- or LLC-held purchases, and non-primary-residence investment ownership are common at this price point across ultra-luxury Florida real estate generally, and this page did not attempt to state what share of Star, Palm, and Hibiscus Island homes specifically carry a homestead exemption versus not -- that would require a parcel-by-parcel pull from the Property Appraiser this research pass did not perform. What matters for a buyer is knowing which cap applies to a specific property before assuming a number: homesteaded property gets the 3%/CPI cap described above; non-homestead residential and most commercial property instead gets a separate cap, limiting assessed-value growth to 10% a year (excluding the school-tax portion), established by a 2008 constitutional amendment that Florida voters made permanent in 2018. Both caps reset when a property changes ownership or, for the non-homestead cap, when its use changes.

What a New Buyer Should Actually Expect

Because both Florida assessment caps reset at sale, a new buyer on these islands should expect the property to be reassessed at full current market value in the year following purchase -- meaning a longtime seller's capped assessed value, and the correspondingly lower tax bill they'd been paying, offers no protection to the buyer. If the new owner establishes the property as a Florida homestead, the 3%/CPI cap begins accruing from that new, higher base; if the property remains non-homestead (a second home, an investment purchase, or an entity-held property), the 10% cap applies instead. Either way, a buyer should model the tax bill off the expected post-sale assessed value -- generally close to the purchase price -- not off whatever the prior owner's tax bill happened to be, which real estate listings sometimes display in a way that understates what a new owner will actually pay.

This page does not state a specific illustrative dollar tax bill for a hypothetical home here, deliberately, because the range of sale prices on these islands (documented elsewhere on this site at roughly $5.7 million to $99 million in one recent snapshot) is too wide for a single example to be meaningfully representative. The arithmetic is straightforward once a specific assessed value is known -- multiply by the combined millage, expressed as dollars per $1,000 of value -- but the assessed value itself is the number that requires confirmation from the Property Appraiser, not an assumption based on the listing price.

Homestead Exemption and Other Relief, If Applicable

Florida offers a standard homestead exemption reducing taxable value for a primary residence, along with additional exemptions and relief programs for seniors, veterans, and disabled homeowners that this page did not independently verify the current eligibility thresholds or dollar amounts for in this research pass. Given the ultra-high assessed values typical on these islands, a standard homestead exemption's dollar impact is proportionally smaller here than it would be on a median-priced Florida home, but the Save Our Homes cap it triggers is often the more financially significant benefit over time for an owner who intends to live in the property as a genuine primary residence. Ask the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser directly about current exemption amounts and eligibility rather than relying on a generic figure found online.

Appeals and Confirming a Specific Parcel's Numbers

Florida property owners who believe an assessment doesn't reflect fair market value have a formal, time-limited appeal path through the county's Value Adjustment Board process, following an annual TRIM (Truth in Millage) notice mailed to owners. This page did not independently confirm the specific 2025 or 2026 notice-mailing and appeal-window dates for Miami-Dade County in this research pass -- confirm the current year's schedule directly with the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser's office if a specific assessment appears to be in error.

For any specific address on Star, Palm, or Hibiscus Island, the responsible path before making an offer is the same regardless of price point: pull the parcel's current assessed value, homestead status, and full tax history directly from the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser's public records (not from a real estate listing site, which may show a stale or seller-favorable figure), and ask a local closing attorney or title company to confirm exactly how the post-sale reassessment is likely to affect the first full tax year of new ownership.