ATLANTA (AP) — It’s a goal spreading among anti-tax crusaders — eliminating all property taxes on homeowners.
Rising property values have raised tax bills in many states, but ending all homeowner taxes would cost billions or even tens of billions in most states. It is unclear whether lawmakers can succeed without harming schools and local governments that rely on taxes to provide services.
Officials in North Dakota say they are on their way, using the state’s oil money. On Wednesday, Republicans in the Georgia House unveiled a complex effort to phase out home property taxes by 2032. In Florida, GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis says that’s his goal, with lawmakers currently considering phasing out non-school property taxes on homeowners over 10 years. And in Texas, Republican Governor Greg Abbott says he wants to eliminate property taxes for schools.
Republicans are echoing those who say that taxes, especially when the tax collector can seize a house for non-payment, means that nobody really owns property.
“No one should ever have to face losing their home because they can’t pay rent to the government,” Georgia Republican House Speaker Jon Burns of Newington said Wednesday.
An election-year tax riot
These audacious election-year efforts could be joined by ballot initiatives in Oklahoma and Ohio to eliminate all property taxes. Such initiatives were defeated in North Dakota in 2024 and failed to make the ballot in Nebraska that year, though organizers there are trying again. Another initiative in Michigan may also fail to make the ballot.
“We are very much in this era of the property tax revolt, which is not unique, it is not new. We have seen these revolts in the past,” said Manish Bhatt, vice president of state tax policy at the Tax Foundation, a Washington DC group, which is generally skeptical of new taxes.
Previous reactions led to laws such as California’s Proposition 13, a 1978 initiative that limited property tax rates and how much local governments could raise property assessments for tax purposes.
The efforts are aimed at voters like Tim Hodnett, a 65-year-old retiree in the Atlanta suburb of Lawrenceville. Hodnett’s annual property tax bill rose from $2,000 to $3,000 between 2018 and 2024. He sees those figures sharply because he paid off his mortgage years ago, and pays his taxes all at once, instead of making monthly payments.
Hodnett said he is on disability and lives on $30,000 a year. He’s about to get a big property tax break, because seniors in Gwinnett County are exempt from school property taxes, about two-thirds of his bill. But he likes not paying that other $1,000 either.
“It would be nice to be exempt from property taxes,” Hodnett said.
Will there be replacement income?
The question is whether local governments and K-12 schools should be expected to cut spending, or whether they should be allowed to draw revenue from some other source.
“I think the complete elimination of the property tax for homeowners is going to be really, really difficult in most states and localities across the country, and undesirable in most places,” said Adam Langley, of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a Massachusetts nonprofit that studies land use and taxation.
Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, a Republican, has been touring the state arguing that local governments are overspending, trying to show they don’t need the $19 billion in property taxes they collect from homeowners, meaning the home is their primary residence. Local governments have long disputed those figures.
North Dakota, by contrast, is using proceeds from the state’s $13.4 billion oil tax savings account to phase out homeowner property taxes. Last year, North Dakota’s Republican-controlled Legislature expanded its primary residence tax credit from $500 to $1,600 a year. Officials said in December that the tax credit lifted property taxes for 50,000 homes last year and reduced bills for nearly 100,000 more. That cost $400 million in state subsidies for the 2025 and 2026 tax years.
“It works, and we know we can build on it to provide even more relief and bring property taxes to zero for the vast majority of North Dakota homeowners,” said Republican Governor Kelly Armstrong.
The situation is murkier in Texas, which has been using surplus state funds to fund property tax cuts, and under Georgia’s proposal, which calls for shifting taxes around.
Shift from property taxes to sales
Burns wants Georgia to get rid of $5.2 billion in homeowner property taxes — more than a quarter of the $19.9 billion in property taxes collected in 2024, by telling cities, counties and school districts to fall back on current or new sales taxes.
Not only does Burns’ plan need the Republican-led Senate to agree, it needs Democratic support to meet the two-thirds hurdle for a state constitutional amendment and then voter approval in November.
While most property taxes go to schools, the majority of sales taxes do not go to some communities. It is unclear whether localities will redistribute sales taxes. In addition, local governments and schools remain limited to a combined 5% sales tax rate, higher than the state’s 4% rate. Some schools and governments may not be able to raise sales taxes high enough to recoup the lost revenue.
Georgia will go from currently shielding $5,000 in home value from taxation to $150,000 in 2031 before abolishing most homeowner property taxes in 2032. The plan limits the annual growth of property tax revenue to 3% on other types of property.
Local governments would be able to send an annual bill to homeowners for specified services such as trash collection, street lighting, stormwater control and fire protection, but lawmakers aren’t calling it a tax. Voters can also approve assessments for government or school improvements. The authors said they have not yet decided whether property owners could lose their homes due to unpaid assessments.
Burns also wants to spend about $1 billion to lower property tax bills in 2026, but it’s unclear whether Republican Gov. Brian Kemp will agree. A spokesman declined comment.
Georgia has previously tried to limit how much home values can rise for tax purposes, one approach common across the nation. But the majority of school districts and many other local governments opted out. Georgia senators are still pursuing that approach, with a Senate committee on Wednesday scheduled to vote to make the cap mandatory.
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Associated Press writer Jack Dura in Bismarck, North Dakota, contributed.