Property Tax Revolt Spreads as Homeowners Push Back

Ray Warner paid off his house years ago. He’s 72, lives in Akron, and wore a Cleveland Browns coat to a flea market in Hartville, Ohio, where he signed a petition to abolish property taxes. “I’m old. I’ve paid my home off,” he said. “Why would I pay property tax?” He wasn’t alone. Dozens of people lined up at folding tables on the Saturday before Memorial Day. The effort behind those tables now forms part of a revolt that has reached more than two dozen states over the past two years.

The anger has real numbers behind it. Home values have climbed an average of 50% nationwide since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the median annual property tax payment rose 25% from 2019 to 2024, an increase of more than $600, according to a Lincoln Institute of Land Policy analysis of U.S. Census data. Typical Ohio bills have climbed to nearly $3,000 a year. Ohio already ranked among the top 10 states for highest property taxes.

A Grassroots Campaign Takes Hold

Brian Massie, 79, leads the Ohio ballot initiative. The retired small-business owner got alarmed a decade ago by the tax bill on his 5,400-square-foot ranch home outside Cleveland. He studied Ohio tax law and local taxing authorities’ finances, then took his case to community groups. Local officials once dismissed him as a crank and gadfly. Now state legislators call him as they draft bills.

Massie says volunteers have collected 300,000 signatures, and political observers believe the measure could qualify for the 2027 ballot. That matters because Ohio citizens’ initiatives typically demand multimillion-dollar budgets to hire petition carriers. “This is probably the most robust purely grassroots effort I have ever seen in Ohio,” said Greg Lawson, a senior fellow at the conservative Buckeye Institute. Massie frames it as a matter of principle. “This is the foundation of freedom and liberty,” he said. “We are not going to give up that inalienable right of private property.”

The argument has traction. Activists say the tax turns homeowners into “vassals” who pay rent to the government to live in their own homes, which officials can seize if a bill goes unpaid. Judge Glock, an economic historian at the Manhattan Institute, called the branding “one of the most successful political slogans in modern memory.” Unlike income or sales taxes, property taxes can rise even when a homeowner loses a job or cuts spending. A neighbor’s higher sale price can push up an assessment.

The Price of Abolition

The bill comes due somewhere, and officials in both parties say they know where. State and local governments collect about $800 billion a year from the levy, more than Sweden’s annual GDP, and it accounts for about 70% of local tax collections. Replacing the $24 billion Ohio would lose would require the state’s average income tax rate to rise to just under 13%, according to the Tax Foundation, nearly as high as the rate paid by millionaires in California.

Budget advisers to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine warned this year that abolition “would quite literally ‘defund’ the police.” Robert Butler, a past president of the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police and police chief in Independence, was blunter: “You’re actually talking the immediate forced liquidation of patrol units and the degradation of emergency response. You’re gonna wipe them out.” Massie calls such warnings alarmist. “We’re not anarchists,” he said, arguing that government should shrink and the Legislature would find other revenue.

In Charlestown, Indiana, the strain already shows. A former ammunition plant is being redeveloped, bringing jobs and residents that would normally lift property tax revenue. Instead, the city is cutting its budget. A public park cut its operating schedule from seven days a week to four. Residents were told their cul-de-sac streets won’t be cleared immediately this winter because the city can’t pay snowplow drivers overtime.

Republicans Split Over How Far to Go

The fight is sharpest inside the Republican Party. Florida Republican lawmakers balked at Gov. Ron DeSantis’s plan to eliminate the tax for more than 90% of primary residences, stripped his proposed education-funding cuts, and sent a narrower measure to the November ballot. Incoming House Speaker Sam Garrison said Republicans agreed taxes should be cut but “we’ve also been frank with voters there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Several Republican sheriffs criticized the measure, and one called it a “train wreck.” In Texas, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick warned that Gov. Greg Abbott’s proposal to eliminate school property taxes on primary residences would force sales taxes to unsustainable levels.

In Ohio, DeWine vetoed more aggressive bills before signing a reduced package focused mainly on limiting future increases. “We have to provide for our schools; we have to provide for fire, EMS, police and children’s services and many other things,” he said in December. State Rep. David Thomas, a Republican who has led the Legislature’s work, considers Massie’s abolition initiative too extreme. GOP gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy called for “the largest property tax rollback in Ohio history,” but backed away from a promise to eliminate the tax entirely.

Other states have moved more cautiously. Montana cut taxes on owner-occupied homes, Iowa capped the growth of local property tax revenue, and Oklahoma put a measure on the November ballot to restrict future increases. Texas used its budget surplus, and North Dakota used oil-and-gas extraction tax money, to cover lost funds.

Voters have been cooler than the activists. North Dakota voters rejected a repeal initiative in 2024 by nearly 2 to 1, though the state passed a landmark cut the following year. Recent polls in Florida and Ohio show early support for drastic cuts dropping below the level needed for passage once voters hear about possible local deficits or replacement tax increases.

Lessons From California

California’s Proposition 13, passed 48 years ago, remains the cautionary tale. Property tax receipts fell 60% almost immediately. The state took over education funding and leaned on volatile income taxes tied to the stock market, producing sharp swings between surplus and deficit. Isaac Martin, a sociologist at the University of California, San Diego, warned that Republican leaders risk repeating those problems. “By ruling out the best tool available for local government, you’re going to get a worse system and you’re going to be stuck with it,” he said.

A 2024 study by researchers from the federal government and Yale found that property tax cuts in Georgia increased home prices, drawing buyers into bidding wars and encouraging owners to stay longer. Younger first-time buyers were hurt most, while older, long-term homeowners benefited disproportionately. In Los Angeles, a 50-year owner of a $1 million home pays under $500 a year, while a neighbor who bought a $1 million home last year owes $10,000.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page also took aim at DeSantis’s suggestion that local governments recover lost revenue from owners of second homes, comparing it to the “soak-the-rich” approach of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Why This Matters: Property taxes pay for the services most voters touch daily: police, fire, schools, snowplows. The revolt reflects a legitimate grievance, since assessments can climb faster than incomes and bills arrive whether or not a homeowner has the cash. But the evidence from Charlestown, California and North Dakota suggests the real policy test isn’t whether to cut but how, and what replaces the revenue. Steep cuts without a durable substitute can push costs onto volatile income taxes, higher sales taxes or services residents expect to keep. Measures that cap growth, phase in relief and tie reductions to spending restraint have fared better at the ballot box and in legislatures. Voters, not activists or officials, will decide in Ohio next year and in Florida and Oklahoma next month.