Soaring housing prices across the country are driving away would-be homeowners, something lawmakers in at least a half-dozen states are trying to prevent. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has floated getting rid of property taxes altogether to alleviate some of the pain.
“Is it your property or not? Just for being on your property year after year, you’ve got to write a check to the government every year,” DeSantis said during a March 4 address. “So you’re basically paying rent to the government to live on your own property.”
Last year, voters in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, New Mexico, Virginia, and Wyoming approved ballot issues aimed at lowering property taxes. In North Dakota, a measure that would have abolished them failed after a coalition of police, firefighters, teachers, and real estate brokers convinced voters not to scrap them, claiming it would have crippled local services.
But this year, Florida, backed by DeSantis, is taking up the cause. Whether he is serious or it is political posturing on his part as some have claimed, the effort has been gaining traction among lawmakers and reflects the strain homeowners are under.
Home prices in Florida have skyrocketed in recent years. They have quadrupled in Miami since 2012 and tripled in Orlando and Tampa. The state median for a home is $385,000, which comes out to a yearly tax bill of $3,041. Average home insurance premiums in Florida have also climbed, rising to $3,731 in 2024 from $1,973 in 2018, according to the Insurance Information Institute and state data.
Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation, said the country is seeing “a groundswell of opposition to property taxes generally” and likened it to protests in the 1970s and 1980s. That wave of anger eventually led to California’s Proposition 13, which capped how high property taxes could go.
DeSantis wants to get a constitutional amendment in front of voters next year that would abolish or reduce property taxes. The effort would need at least 60% approval from voters to pass.
Because Florida does not charge residents personal income tax, the state is much more reliant on property taxes.
“In a densely populated state like Florida, if policymakers wanted to eliminate property taxes, they would need to raise $43 billion (or $2,015 per capita) to maintain public services currently funded with property tax revenue,” according to an analysis from the Florida Policy Institute. “Moreover, in states that prohibit different types of taxation (e.g., nine states do not collect personal income taxes, including Florida), designing an equitable and balanced tax system is difficult. In Florida, eliminating property taxes would not only erode local fiscal autonomy — it would also exacerbate the state’s reliance on sales taxes, which disproportionately overburden families and workers with low to moderate income.”
The state’s general sales tax would have to be raised to at least 12% to make up the cost, according to the institute. Florida’s current sales tax sits at 6%.
During DeSantis’s State of the State speech, he ruled out raising any state taxes to replace property taxes. When pressed on the issue, he said getting rid of waste and excessive spending by local governments would cut the amount of money needed for the state to function.
Florida’s property tax system is among the top issues being debated in the current legislative session. If Florida is successful in eliminating property taxes, the state would be the first in the nation to do so.
Lawmakers have filed dozens of bills on the issue, ranging from proposals to end the tax to tweaks that would give targeted help to homeowners.
“People are getting crushed not just by home insurance but by property taxes,” GOP state Sen. Jonathan Martin told the Wall Street Journal. “That American dream in Florida is taking five figures a year in local taxes.”
Martin is sponsoring a bill that would require a study on the elimination of property taxes to be done by October. His office did not respond to multiple email and phone requests by the Washington Examiner for further details.
Republican state Rep. Ryan Chamberlin, who filed two bills aimed at reducing property taxes, said the push is not designed to strip funding for schools or police and echoed DeSantis’s sentiment that revenue shortfalls could be made up by cutting state and local government fat.
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But not everybody is on board. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, a Democrat, believes the tax should stay in place.
“Eliminating this tax would force us to make extremely drastic public safety cuts that would directly endanger the health and well-being of our community,” she wrote in a memorandum to county commissioners.