Florida Republicans have promised for nearly a year to provide meaningful property tax relief to Floridians in the form of a constitutional amendment they could vote on this November.
Despite that hype, no such proposal has received the three-fifths support in both chambers in the Legislature that is required to get a legislatively backed constitutional amendment on the ballot. Gov. Ron DeSantis promises that will come during a special legislative session yet to be scheduled, but some of the most aggressive GOP advocates for cutting property taxes are indicating they don’t expect whatever is announced to be wide-ranging enough.
The one proposal that House Republicans approved this year (but is officially dead after the Senate declined to vote on it) called for eliminating all non-school property taxes for homesteaded properties beginning in January.
But that wasn’t nearly enough tax relief for homeowners, says Rep. Ryan Chamberlin, R-Belleview, who is leading an effort to place a citizen-led constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2028 that would eliminate all property taxes.
“Last year, we collected $18 billion in homestead property taxes,” Chamberlin told the Phoenix in a phone interview.
“I’m trying to eliminate all property taxes, but if we just went after homestead, the last four years we’ve increased the property tax revenues by as much or more than what all the homestead properties are even collecting right now. So, if we just wiped-out homestead properties, we would just be taking our revenue stream back a few years.”
Property taxes in Florida are levied by counties, municipalities, school districts, and some special districts based on the value of real and tangible personal property. Those revenues pay for law enforcement, social services, parks, environmental programs, and more.
During the recently concluded regular legislative session, House Republicans proposed seven constitutional amendments addressing property taxes. Halfway through the session, they opted to put all of their chips behind a measure that would have gradually increased the homestead exemption for non-school-related property taxes by $100,000 each year for 10 years.
The bill sponsor, Rep. Monique Miller, R-Palm Bay, said her proposal was structured that way to avoid an immediate financial shock to local governments and give them time to adjust to working with those reduced revenues.
However, Miller filed an amendment to her own bill (HJR 203) when it reached the floor that jettisoned the planned 10-year phase in, instead completely ending non-school property taxes for homesteaded properties starting next January.
It came the day after Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Ed Hooper said the Senate’s version “won’t be as generous.” The House measure would have cost $14.7 billion in local non-school property tax revenues in fiscal year 2027-2028.
Senate Republicans ultimately declined to support any property tax reduction bill during the session, seemingly taking their cues from DeSantis, who preferred that they deal with the issue after the regular session.
“I highly respect and work with and support Rep Monique Miller’s work on this,” Chamberlin said.
“But if you remember, all of the tax relief bills on the House side excluded any reduction in funding for police, fire, and schools. Which is about 80% of property tax revenue. So, in essence, there’s no way that you can eliminate property taxes if you can’t touch 82% of what needs to be eliminated.”
Chamberlin now says he’s “pessimistic” about the state putting any serious tax property reform proposal before the voters this year.
“There’s still a chance that it could end up on the ballot, but I believe the only way to ensure this is to make sure that we take this to the people, and that’s where this ballot initiative idea was birthed,” he said.
“It’s going to take a lot of work to get that done, but it’s also going to keep the conversation alive. In the next eight months, we’re going to have a new governor in the state of Florida. We’re going to have a new Senate president. A new speaker of the House. And I am optimistic that if we keep this conversation alive, we can be the first state in the United States to actually allow people to own their property rather than rent it from the government.”
Attack on local spending
Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia has been traveling around the state since being appointed to his position last summer making the case that local governments’ spending is out of control and that they can withstand reductions in revenues if and when the amount of property taxes they collect is reduced. That’s been met with fierce pushback from locally elected officials, who dispute Ingoglia’s claims of “wasteful spending.”
Lawmakers in several other states have proposed reducing or ending property taxes, but none have succeeded (see list of states below).
Chamberlin is fully cognizant that advocates for the complete elimination of property taxes must show that the revenues lost can be replaced to secure the approval of the necessary 60% of Florida voters.
“I do not believe that the government should have a lien on anybody’s property,” he said.
“I think that there are other ways in a $1.8 trillion dollar economy like Florida has to generate the revenue needed — there’s smarter ways. There’s even ways for us to benefit from the travelers and the things that come to Florida that we haven’t taken seriously. We haven’t seriously explored alternative revenue streams. Instead, we’re just taxing people indefinitely for property.”
Citizen-led constitutional amendments have never had a higher bar to get on the ballot. Efforts to legalize recreational cannabis and enshrine abortion rights on the ballot in 2024 came up short of the 60% required for passage, even though both campaigns spent well north of $100 million. Legislation signed into law a year ago has made it even more difficult for such groups to qualify for the ballot, resulting in no citizen-led constitutional amendments getting on the ballot this year.
Nevertheless, Chamberlin says he’s “dead serious” about getting such a proposal on the ballot in 2028.
“I’ve got teams of people in addition to the attorneys to make sure that we do all of this the right way. We know that there’s going to have be money raised but we also know the amount of support across the 23 to 24 million people here in the state of Florida” he said.
“This conversation has been elevated. And I’ll give thanks to our governor and the speaker, but definitely the governor, who has used his platform to elevate this conversation. People are wanting and needing relief. We believe that if any topic has a chance on getting on the ballot, it would be a topic like this. And I can help lead and guide this so it will be a statewide promotional effort.”
Chamberlin hopes a meaningful property tax reform proposal will be introduced in the Legislature this year, “but I don’t sit around and wait for things to get perfect, because it’ll never get perfect.”
What other states are doing
Florida is one of a number of states seriously exploring the repealing or reduction property taxes.
In Georgia, House Republicans originally proposed eventual elimination of property taxes for homeowners. That measure failed to clear that chamber last month. A more modest measure that did get approved includes options for cities and counties to repurpose optional sales taxes for property tax cuts, but it does not cap overall property tax collections or enact new statewide homestead exemptions, according to the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute.
In Ohio, lawmakers have proposed replacing property taxes with a land-value tax. The bill is still in committee and would ultimately go before voters if passed in the Legislature. There is a separate citizen-led campaign to get a ballot measure on the Ohio ballot to remove property taxes.
In Nebraska, organizers were trying to get a measure on the 2026 ballot that would eliminate property, income, and inheritance taxes and replace them with a broad consumption tax but failed. Those organizers now are aiming for the 2028 ballot.
In South Dakota, lawmakers enacted what Gov. Larry Rhoden called “the largest property tax cut in South Dakota history” last month. The state raised its sales tax rate to make up for the property tax cut.
In Oklahoma, there is a campaign to get a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot this fall that would eliminate property taxes on owner-occupied homesteads through a three-year phase in period.
In Indiana, a bill that would have abolished the assessment of tangible property after 2026 and end the imposition of property taxes by the end of 2027 was introduced but did not pass during the legislative session that ended in late February.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.
