Ohio Lawmakers Working to Reduce Property Taxes

Ohio lawmakers seem committed to delivering property tax relief in the current session, but they’re still zeroing in on their approach. They’ve introduced at least seven measures tweaking the homestead exemption — for disabled vets, military spouses, the elderly — and a handful more changing how counties calculate what homeowners owe.

Most notably, however, House lawmakers have proposed an automatic rollback in the state budget that triggers if a school district carries over any more than 30% of their operating revenue.

An organization backed by realtors, county auditors, and the Ohio Chamber of Commerce is wading into that debate. The Ohio Taxpayer Protection Coalition is urging lawmakers to avoid “unvoted” property tax increases.

“Our point isn’t to take away revenue from school districts,” coalition chair and former state tax commissioner Tom Zaino explained. “Our point is to reduce the rate of increase of revenue without a vote of school district residents.”

House Bill 920

Zaino argued that state lawmakers need to revisit a measure passed in the 1970s meant to insulate homeowners from rising home values. Property taxes are calculated in mills — one mill is one thousandth of a dollar, or one tenth of a percent.

In every county, taxing authorities like local governments, schools, and parks, can levy a total of 10 mills that will grow as home values increase. Any share beyond those 10 mills has to get approval from voters. Meanwhile, to receive state funding, school districts must levy at least 20 mills, or 2% of assessed property value.

House Bill 920 placed a check on those voted levies to ensure rising home prices don’t result in a taxing authority raising extra money. In effect, if your home value goes up, that slice of your property tax rate would decrease to keep your tax bill steady.

“What’s happened, though, over the last 50 years,” Zaino said, “is that these protections have been eroded by many changes made by the General Assembly, which has effectively created loopholes.”

The tax reductions in HB 920 apply to most levies beyond a school district’s 20 mill floor. So, school districts have been resourceful and looked to other sources of funding like emergency levies or local income taxes. That way they can meet immediate funding needs and still benefit from rising property values.

More below:

https://columbusunderground.com/ohio-lawmakers-working-to-reduce-property-taxes-ocj1/

37 minutes ago, ColDayMan said:

Ohio Lawmakers Working to Reduce Property Taxes

Rather than create another exception, why don't they fully fund schools out of income taxes so that schools don't have to rely on property taxes at all!

The bipartisan Fair School Funding Plan was adopted, but now the Republican legislators don't want to fund it. Surprise.

https://columbusunderground.com/ohio-lawmakers-working-to-reduce-property-taxes-ocj1/

Yet they also want to zero out the state income tax.

Signatures Being Collected This Summer to Abolish Property Taxes in Ohio

In a short meeting, the Ohio Ballot Board signed off on a proposed constitutional amendment abolishing property taxes in the state. The only question before the board was whether the proposal contains one or multiple amendments.

Supporters contend lawmakers have been unwilling or unable to make significant enough changes as property taxes climb. But critics warn eliminating that revenue stream could cripple important services like schools and first responders.

Campaign reaction

The day after the ballot board meeting, Beth Blackmarr described her mood as ‘busy.’

“Busy, busy, busy,” she said, “I mean, here we go — we’ve got to hit the ground running.”

Blackmarr is part of the organization Citizens for Property Tax Reform which is leading the repeal campaign. With the ballot board’s decision, the group is now able to start gathering signatures to appear on the ballot.

To go before voters, they’ll need 10% of the electoral turnout from the last governor’s race (just shy of 415,000). Additionally, in 44 of Ohio’s counties, they’ll need signatures from at least 5% of the governor’s race turnout. In practice, campaigns turn in hundreds of thousands more signatures than necessary to make up for any rejections.

Blackmarr said they want to start collecting “as soon as humanly possible,” and work could begin as early as next week. Asked whether they’d work with paid circulators, she just laughed.

More below:

https://columbusunderground.com/signatures-being-collected-this-summer-to-abolish-property-taxes-in-ohio-ocj1/

What Would it Mean to Abolish Property Taxes in Ohio?

Late last week, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost determined organizers aiming to abolish property taxes had provided a “fair and truthful” summary of their proposed constitutional amendment. The next step is for the state ballot board to determine whether the proposal includes a single constitutional amendment or multiple amendments. The board has ten days to make that determination.

In Ohio, property taxes fund basic services including schools, emergency services, parks, libraries and local governments. But hostility toward property taxes has been growing — particularly among conservatives.

The proposal and its supporters

The group Citizens for Property Tax Reform has advanced the proposal and its text is remarkably simple. It creates a new section in the state constitution stating, “no real property shall be taxed, and no law shall impose any taxes on real property.” It goes on to define “real property” as land, crops, buildings and other permanent improvements.

The amendment’s summary is longer than the actual text that would be added to the state constitution.

The Ohio Capital Journal reached out to Citizens for Property Tax Reform, but the group did not immediately respond. In a recent Facebook post, the group downplayed criticisms.

It acknowledged some believe the proposal is “extreme” but “We feel its extreme to tax a homeowner unrealized gains.” Citizens for Property Tax Reform argued the real problem is “out of control spending at all levels in government” and it’s “flat out wrong and disgusting” for a homeowner to wind up getting taxed out of their home.

With Yost’s approval, the only hurdle standing in the way of supporters collecting signatures is the Ohio Ballot Board’s green light. Once they begin circulating petitions, organizers will need to gather about 413,000 signatures (10% of turnout in the most recent governor’s race), and they’ll have to clear at least 5% of gubernatorial turnout in 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties.

More below:

https://columbusunderground.com/what-would-it-mean-to-abolish-property-taxes-in-ohio-ocj1/

On 4/28/2025 at 5:24 PM, Enginerd said:

Yet they also want to zero out the state income tax.

If you're self-employed (for example, lawyer in a partnership), you already don't pay state income tax on your first $250,000.

The state and local governments cannot run deficits. A continuing effort to eliminate government entity revenue (schools, libraries, local government, county government, state government) must lead to a drop in services. I'm not aware of any school systems returning state funds, saying that they already have enough money.

I would love to pay less in property taxes, but if we eliminate property taxes I'm going to be pretty sad to have to depend on fundraising events to fund schools and libraries. You don't get something from nothing.

5 hours ago, Foraker said:

If you're self-employed (for example, lawyer in a partnership), you already don't pay state income tax on your first $250,000.

The state and local governments cannot run deficits. A continuing effort to eliminate government entity revenue (schools, libraries, local government, county government, state government) must lead to a drop in services. I'm not aware of any school systems returning state funds, saying that they already have enough money.

I would love to pay less in property taxes, but if we eliminate property taxes I'm going to be pretty sad to have to depend on fundraising events to fund schools and libraries. You don't get something from nothing.

This is just a continuing effort to dismantle education outside of conservative charter/private schools. Public education in Ohio would basically collapse without this funding, and Republicans have no plans to replace it with an alternative.

People don't like taxes, but they also seem to believe that all services and quality of life can be maintained without them. That for-profit entities are going to rush in to save us with their altruism. There is no scenario in which these schemes don't simply advance the increasing wealth gap and put more middle and lower income people in a worse position. Our civilization continues to get dumber by the minute.

Edited May 21May 21 by jonoh81

I guess the only good news (and perhaps part of what puts an end to this idea) is that this would probably hurt those charter/private/religious schools as well, since our state legislature keeps finding ways to send them more and more public funds.

Someone posted an overview of this proposal on our local community Facebook page earlier this week. We live in a very good school district that heavily relies on very high property taxes, thanks to the current school funding formula. The only question anyone asked is "what will replace property taxes to fund schools", to which there seems to be no idea of any answer. That universal skepticism has me someone optimistic.

This sort of sounds like a reasonable proposal at face value -retirees don't have to pay taxes to keep living in the house they own. In practice, it would mostly just be a huge handout to McMansion builders, real estate investors, and landlords.