Florida Explores Ditching Property Tax as Home Prices Soar

No, but they should have capped the annual increase at some reasonable level years ago. Like they do right here in Chicago...haha.

Florida Explores Ditching Property Tax as Home Prices Soar

State lawmakers have filed a raft of bills aimed at reducing property taxes—or gutting them altogether

By Arian Campo-Flores and Deborah Acosta, WSJ

March 20, 2025 5:30 am ET

Florida’s leaders are considering a far-reaching remedy to cut the soaring costs of owning a home: ditching property taxes.

Killing property taxes is unlikely. Such a move would leave the state more reliant on its sales tax and strip local governments of revenue to fund everything from schools to social services. But the idea is gaining political traction, reflecting the strain homeowners are under.

The property-tax system is among the top issues under discussion in the legislative session that began this month. The attempted overhaul represents one of the most serious efforts ever. A full repeal would be the first such move in the nation.

Florida’s lawmakers have filed dozens of bills on the issue, ranging from proposals to end property taxes to smaller tweaks to give targeted help to homeowners. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis urged the Legislature in his recent State of the State address to provide relief from such taxes.

“People are getting crushed not just by home insurance but by property taxes,” said GOP state Sen. Jonathan Martin, who is sponsoring a bill that would require that a study on the elimination of property taxes be completed by October. “That American dream in Florida is taking five figures a year in local taxes.”

Revolts against property taxes have erupted elsewhere in recent months as homeowners’ tax bills have risen alongside home values. Property values in the U.S. increased 27%, adjusted for inflation, between January 2020 and July 2024, according to the Tax Foundation, a think tank.

“You’re seeing a groundswell of opposition to property taxes generally”—one reminiscent of a wave of protest in the 1970s and 1980s that triggered ballot measures including Proposition 13 in California that capped property taxes, said Jared Walczak, vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation.

A number of states including Wyoming, Kansas and Montana are weighing significant property-tax limitations, he said. In November, voters in North Dakota rejected a ballot measure that would have eliminated property taxes.

Median home prices in Florida have skyrocketed, quadrupling in the Miami metro area since 2012 and more than tripling in the Orlando and Tampa metro areas, according to the real-estate brokerage Redfin. Average home-insurance premiums in Florida have climbed, rising to $3,731 in 2024 from $1,973 in 2018, according to the Insurance Information Institute and state data.

Florida’s effective property-tax rate ranked 28th nationally in 2023, according to an analysis by the Tax Foundation. But as real-estate values have surged, the total amount levied has roughly doubled over the past decade, reaching more than $55 billion in the 2024-25 fiscal year, according to a recent presentation by Azhar Khan, staff director of the Florida Senate’s finance and tax committee.

“This particularly impacts fixed-income households, mostly retirees, which had not planned for such significant increases in housing costs,” said Juan Arias, a director of market analytics for CoStar in South Florida.

In 2022, Zoe Tosteson Losada, 69, purchased her dream retirement home in Palm Beach Gardens for $809,000.

About a year after the purchase, Tosteson Losada saw her annual property-tax bill explode, to about $10,700 from about $6,000, because the value of the home was reassessed after changing hands. She has since realized that the cost of the taxes, coupled with ballooning insurance costs, makes staying there unlikely.

“I will not be able to retire in this house,” said Tosteson Losada, who lives in the home with her retired husband, Freddy Losada, who is in his 80s, and their son. “I’m the only one working,” she said. “We’re losing money every day.”

Among the legislative bills filed for the current session in Tallahassee are several that would increase exemptions that reduce the taxable value of a property. Included would be the homestead exemption, which applies to a home used as a primary residence. A constitutional amendment approved by Florida voters last year requires that the homestead exemption be adjusted upward for inflation.

In Florida, which has no personal income tax, property taxes play a significant role in paying for schools, police, parks and other services. They account for 18% of county revenue, 17% of municipal revenue and 50% to 60% of school-district revenue, according to a recent report by the Florida Policy Institute, a nonprofit focused on economic mobility. If property taxes were eliminated, the sales tax would have to be at least doubled, to 12%, to make up for the lost revenue, the report said.

DeSantis has said his goal is to get a constitutional amendment abolishing or reducing property taxes on the ballot in 2026, which would require at least 60% approval from voters to pass.

In his State of the State speech, DeSantis ruled out raising any state taxes to replace property taxes. He later suggested that getting rid of waste and excessive spending by local governments would reduce the amount of revenue they need.

Republican state Rep. Ryan Chamberlin, who filed two bills aimed at reducing property taxes, said the push isn’t designed to strip funding for schools or police, and thinks revenue shortfalls could be made up through cutting waste, potentially increasing the sales tax and possibly boosting levies paid by tourists.

In a recent memo to county commissioners, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, a Democrat, said the removal of property taxes would mean a $3 billion loss of revenue. “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.

Rainbow over Miami Brickell residential buildings.

Median home prices in the Miami metro area have quadrupled since 2012. Photo: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg

Tosteson Losada, the homeowner, said she supports the idea of a property-tax reduction, but worries about the cuts in government services that she suspects might accompany one. “I’ve seen what happens when you can’t call an ambulance and you can’t call the police, and you have no guarantees that the roads will be repaired and so on,” said Tosteson Losada, referring to difficulties she faced while living as an expat in Venezuela.

Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani said that while she supports exploring options for targeted relief from property taxes—say, for seniors—she considers full elimination a terrible idea. It would force the state to jack up the sales tax, disproportionately affecting lower-income people, she said. Revenue from the sales tax is less dependable, she added, because it is sensitive to fluctuations in the economy.

Some Republicans are skeptical as well. “The question is what will replace personal property taxes,” said state Sen. Don Gaetz. “I have not seen any proposal that eliminates property taxes, replaces them with a fairer or better tax and ensures that local governments will still have the funds to operate efficiently.”