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Property tax crisis or a solution in search of a problem?
By William March/Florida Trident
November 12, 2025 at 7:56 AM EST
Power Play: A series of special reports examining the push to reduce or eliminate property taxes in Florida.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says homestead property taxes are a severe burden on Florida homeowners and wants to abolish them, regardless of the potentially devastating effects on local government budgets.
The Florida Legislature has been working to accommodate him.
House members have produced at least a dozen proposals, mostly constitutional amendments, that would reduce taxes by varying amounts on homesteads, the primary residence of the homeowner, and established a select committee to study the problem.
The Senate has also produced a number of similar proposals, but no separate committee on the issue.
But if rising property taxes is a problem that needs fixing, lawmakers have yet to detail how big the problem is.
After weeks of proposals, public posturing and bickering over the issue , the Legislature hasn’t produced an estimate of how much homestead property taxes have increased in recent years.
“That’s not an easy figure to find,” said Kurt Wenner, a veteran analyst of state tax and revenue figures for Florida TaxWatch, a taxpayer advocacy group that pushes for low taxes.
He said homestead taxes aren’t normally broken out in state figures on property tax collections, partly because many taxable parcels include both homestead and non-homestead holdings.
DeSantis, who in June vetoed the Legislature’s attempt to study property taxes, has scorned the House proposals as wimpy and “an insult.”
“They’re all milquetoast” while Floridians want a “bold” proposal, he said at the University of South Florida Oct. 29. “There’s not one proposal that would get people excited about,” he said. “They’re total half measures.”
DeSantis portrays it as an urgent issue.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at a roundtable discussion in Jacksonville, May, 9, 2025, relating to property tax relief for Floridians. (688x362, AR: 1.9005524861878453)
“Of all the taxes that impact Floridians, property taxes are the most significant. When people talk to me about taxes, 99 percent talk about property taxes,” he said when he introduced a proposal for a property tax rebate and added that all homestead property taxes should be abolished.
“Taxing land/property is the most oppressive and ineffective form of taxation,” he posted on X March 31. “We should put the boldest amendment on the ballot that has a chance of getting that 60%” – the number of votes needed to pass a constitutional amendment.
But is rising homestead taxes really a crisis? And are Floridians demanding a bold solution?
Statistics and comments from legislators, local government officials and others suggest otherwise.
War of words
Despite his urgency, and despite sparking a feud with legislators with his criticism of their proposals, DeSantis has yet to make any detailed proposal himself.
He has promised to do so, but the lack of one has given his critics ammunition.
Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez. (208x279, AR: 0.7455197132616488)
Responding to DeSantis, House Speaker Daniel Perez said DeSantis was being “small and petty.”
If DeSantis considers the House proposals “milquetoast,” Perez said, the governor must want to abolish all homestead taxes including those for schools (the House proposals exempt school taxes).
“I look forward to seeing the Governor’s proposed budget where he makes up for the $21 billion for schools that he plans to cut,” Perez said Oct. 29.
DeSantis’ office did not respond to a list of questions including whether or when he will make a property tax cut proposal and what data motivated his initiative.
One of the main objections to DeSantis’ initiative is that the Save Our Homes constitutional amendment already keeps property taxes low on many homesteads, as the Trident reported last week.
“It’s a bit of a false claim that somehow property taxes in Florida are out of control,” said political analyst Aubrey Jewett of the University of Central Florida. “Save Our Homes has really worked – anybody that’s owned their home for any length of time is not paying a lot in property taxes.”
That amendment limits how much the taxable value of a homestead can go up to no more than 3 percent a year — thus limiting taxes — regardless of how much its appraised value increases.
The size of the tax break increases as the home value increases, and much of the benefit can be transferred to a new home.
When the Save Our Homes amendment was put on the ballot in 1992, “Taxpayers were getting ready to take torches and pitchforks to Tallahassee” over skyrocketing property taxes, Jewett said. “I don’t think a lot of homeowners are feeling that stress today.”
Meanwhile, first-time homebuyers and those moving into the state, who don’t have the Save Our Homes tax break, face the full brunt of rising property values and taxes.
And rapid increases in property values have caused big increases in tax levies for non-homestead properties and those without long-term Save Our Homes protection.
Overall, according to TaxWatch, total property taxes have more than doubled since 2014, including a 40 percent rise in the last three years, now totalling about $55 billion.
That’s happened even though nearly all Florida counties have kept their tax rates the same or reduced them since 2019, according to the Florida Association of Counties.
“But if you look at the homestead taxes only, it’s not growing as fast for those who have been in Save Our Homes for a while,” Wenner said.
Taxes on homestead property are about a third of the total, about $19 billion out of $55 billion.
Of that $19 billion, about $5 billion is in taxes levied by school districts, which wouldn’t be affected by the legislative proposals. So entirely eliminating non-school property taxes on homesteads would save taxpayers about $14 billion, according to state figures.
Complaints about insurance
A bigger problem for Florida homeowners and hopeful home buyers is the cost of homeowner’s insurance, some legislators and advocacy groups say, contending that DeSantis and the Legislature haven’t done much about that.
According to the Tax Foundation, a non-partisan Washington, D.C., research and advocacy group generally considered center-right or libertarian, Florida is 30th in the nation in the taxes paid on owner-occupied housing, at 0.74 percent of housing value annually.
But according to the U.S. Census, Florida is No. 1 in median annual property insurance premiums. Many homeowners find their property insurance costs more than their property taxes.
“We don’t get a lot of complaints about property taxes,” Rep. Jim Mooney, R-Islamorada, told WLRN.
“We get a lot of complaints about insurance, which I think honestly should be the bigger debate,” said Mooney, a member of the House select committee studying the property tax issue.
“If we gut the system, communities get gutted,” Mooney said of the proposals for eliminating homestead taxes. “It’s not good for property values or for quality of life.”
Some critics contend that DeSantis is engaging in political posturing to portray himself as a conservative warrior.
Former state Sen. Jeff Brandes of St. Petersburg, a Republican whose term extended through Gov. Ron DeSantis’ first term as governor. (449x472, AR: 0.951271186440678)
“The reason he’s putting it out there is political – it’s about his run for president in 2028,” said former state Sen. Jeff Brandes of St. Petersburg, a Republican whose term extended through DeSantis’ first term as governor. He now runs a non-profit think tank, the Florida Public Policy Project.
A major reduction in homestead property taxes would be felt statewide by local governments, which depend heavily on property taxes to fund basic municipal services — police and fire protection, street construction and repair, stormwater infrastructure, parks and libraries.
Property taxes support about 28 percent of local government operations, according to an analysis by the Florida Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank generally considered moderate to liberal.
Taxing districts such as ports and airports would also be hit.
Local governments would feel pressure to replace their losses with increases in taxes on commercial and non-homestead residential property, sales taxes, fines and fees, said Hillsborough County Property Appraiser Bob Henriquez.
For DeSantis, a new cause
Throughout his tenure, DeSantis has sought to portray himself as one of the nation’s leading conservative warriors in causes including school choice, culture wars against “woke” ideology, abolishing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and promoting gun rights.
He hasn’t previously made cutting property taxes one of those issues. DeSantis made no such proposal during his first term, said Brandes, whose last Senate term coincided with DeSantis’ first term.
But lately, property taxes have become a conservative bandwagon – at least five other states are considering measures to cut homestead taxes, according to Realtor.com
And DeSantis poses a philosophical objection to homestead taxes: “Home ownership should mean you fully own your home, not be forced to pay rent to the government in the form of property taxes,” he has posted on X Oct. 22.
Without the rights and privileges protected by the government, ownership is meaningless, Henriquez said.
Taxation, the Hillsborough property appraiser said, is “a condition of ownership privileges that you receive – infrastructure, public safety, schools and so on. It’s a way of sustaining our system — we have certain property rights and certain obligations.”
And many of the services of local governments, such as police and fire protection, are directly related to protecting ownership rights, said Kevin Brickey, Hillsborough management and budget director.
To Brandes, DeSantis’s failure to produce a proposal suggests the governor isn’t really serious about the idea.
“It’s a concept, not a serious proposal – a serious proposal comes with details and research and a framework,” Brandes said.
Brandes noted that DeSantis will be out of office by the time the results of any major tax cut begin to be felt – “He doesn’t have to eat his own cooking.”
In response to DeSantis’ initiative to cut property taxes, the Legislature voted last year to put $1 million in the state budget to study the question – the study DeSantis vetoed – because “we know what needs to be done.”
Florida Rep. Michael Owen, R-Apollo Beach. (1280x720, AR: 1.7777777777777777)
It’s not that simple, said Rep. Mike Owen, R-Apollo Beach, another member of the House select committee.
Owen believes property taxes need to be cut, though he wouldn’t “frame it as a crisis.” One problem, he said, is that some counties depend far more on homestead taxes than others.
Owen noted that Manatee County, part of his district, with substantial sales tax revenue generated partly by tourists, depends much less on homestead taxes than other counties.
Florida has 29 “fiscally constrained” counties which are mostly rural with small populations and tax bases where 1 mill of property tax generates less than $5 million. Taxes on homesteads are a much bigger part of those counties’ budgets than in larger counties.
Those aren’t the only disparities in homestead taxation, noted Wenner of Taxwatch.
Wenner said property taxes overall have been increasing rapidly — about 40 percent in the last three years — largely because of rising property values.
He estimated that total homestead taxes levied have also increased, but largely because of a rapid increase in the number of homestead parcels as agricultural land turns into subdivisions.
Homeowners with longstanding Save Our Homes caps have been largely shielded from rising taxes, first-time homebuyers or those moving into the state aren’t, he said.
Owen said that means research and planning is needed before making major changes.
So why did DeSantis veto the money to study the issue?
“That’s a good question,” Owen said.
About the author: William March has written about politics in the Tampa Bay area for the past 40 years. He has worked for newspapers in his native North Carolina and for the Tampa Tribune, the Tampa Bay Times and the Associated Press in Florida. The Florida Trident is an investigative news outlet focusing on government accountability and transparency across Florida. The Trident was created and first published in 2022 by the Florida Center for Government Accountability, a non-profit organization that facilitates local investigative reporting across the state.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says homestead property taxes are a severe burden on Florida homeowners and wants to abolish them, regardless of the potentially devastating effects on local government budgets.
The Florida Legislature has been working to accommodate him.
House members have produced at least a dozen proposals, mostly constitutional amendments, that would reduce taxes by varying amounts on homesteads, the primary residence of the homeowner, and established a select committee to study the problem.
The Senate has also produced a number of similar proposals, but no separate committee on the issue.
But if rising property taxes is a problem that needs fixing, lawmakers have yet to detail how big the problem is.
After weeks of proposals, public posturing and bickering over the issue , the Legislature hasn’t produced an estimate of how much homestead property taxes have increased in recent years.
“That’s not an easy figure to find,” said Kurt Wenner, a veteran analyst of state tax and revenue figures for Florida TaxWatch, a taxpayer advocacy group that pushes for low taxes.
He said homestead taxes aren’t normally broken out in state figures on property tax collections, partly because many taxable parcels include both homestead and non-homestead holdings.
DeSantis, who in June vetoed the Legislature’s attempt to study property taxes, has scorned the House proposals as wimpy and “an insult.”
“They’re all milquetoast” while Floridians want a “bold” proposal, he said at the University of South Florida Oct. 29. “There’s not one proposal that would get people excited about,” he said. “They’re total half measures.”
DeSantis portrays it as an urgent issue.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at a roundtable discussion in Jacksonville, May, 9, 2025, relating to property tax relief for Floridians. (688x362, AR: 1.9005524861878453)
“Of all the taxes that impact Floridians, property taxes are the most significant. When people talk to me about taxes, 99 percent talk about property taxes,” he said when he introduced a proposal for a property tax rebate and added that all homestead property taxes should be abolished.
“Taxing land/property is the most oppressive and ineffective form of taxation,” he posted on X March 31. “We should put the boldest amendment on the ballot that has a chance of getting that 60%” – the number of votes needed to pass a constitutional amendment.
But is rising homestead taxes really a crisis? And are Floridians demanding a bold solution?
Statistics and comments from legislators, local government officials and others suggest otherwise.
War of words
Despite his urgency, and despite sparking a feud with legislators with his criticism of their proposals, DeSantis has yet to make any detailed proposal himself.
He has promised to do so, but the lack of one has given his critics ammunition.
Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez. (208x279, AR: 0.7455197132616488)
Responding to DeSantis, House Speaker Daniel Perez said DeSantis was being “small and petty.”
If DeSantis considers the House proposals “milquetoast,” Perez said, the governor must want to abolish all homestead taxes including those for schools (the House proposals exempt school taxes).
“I look forward to seeing the Governor’s proposed budget where he makes up for the $21 billion for schools that he plans to cut,” Perez said Oct. 29.
DeSantis’ office did not respond to a list of questions including whether or when he will make a property tax cut proposal and what data motivated his initiative.
One of the main objections to DeSantis’ initiative is that the Save Our Homes constitutional amendment already keeps property taxes low on many homesteads, as the Trident reported last week.
“It’s a bit of a false claim that somehow property taxes in Florida are out of control,” said political analyst Aubrey Jewett of the University of Central Florida. “Save Our Homes has really worked – anybody that’s owned their home for any length of time is not paying a lot in property taxes.”
That amendment limits how much the taxable value of a homestead can go up to no more than 3 percent a year — thus limiting taxes — regardless of how much its appraised value increases.
The size of the tax break increases as the home value increases, and much of the benefit can be transferred to a new home.
When the Save Our Homes amendment was put on the ballot in 1992, “Taxpayers were getting ready to take torches and pitchforks to Tallahassee” over skyrocketing property taxes, Jewett said. “I don’t think a lot of homeowners are feeling that stress today.”
Meanwhile, first-time homebuyers and those moving into the state, who don’t have the Save Our Homes tax break, face the full brunt of rising property values and taxes.
And rapid increases in property values have caused big increases in tax levies for non-homestead properties and those without long-term Save Our Homes protection.
Overall, according to TaxWatch, total property taxes have more than doubled since 2014, including a 40 percent rise in the last three years, now totalling about $55 billion.
That’s happened even though nearly all Florida counties have kept their tax rates the same or reduced them since 2019, according to the Florida Association of Counties.
“But if you look at the homestead taxes only, it’s not growing as fast for those who have been in Save Our Homes for a while,” Wenner said.
Taxes on homestead property are about a third of the total, about $19 billion out of $55 billion.
Of that $19 billion, about $5 billion is in taxes levied by school districts, which wouldn’t be affected by the legislative proposals. So entirely eliminating non-school property taxes on homesteads would save taxpayers about $14 billion, according to state figures.
Complaints about insurance
A bigger problem for Florida homeowners and hopeful home buyers is the cost of homeowner’s insurance, some legislators and advocacy groups say, contending that DeSantis and the Legislature haven’t done much about that.
According to the Tax Foundation, a non-partisan Washington, D.C., research and advocacy group generally considered center-right or libertarian, Florida is 30th in the nation in the taxes paid on owner-occupied housing, at 0.74 percent of housing value annually.
But according to the U.S. Census, Florida is No. 1 in median annual property insurance premiums. Many homeowners find their property insurance costs more than their property taxes.
“We don’t get a lot of complaints about property taxes,” Rep. Jim Mooney, R-Islamorada, told WLRN.
“We get a lot of complaints about insurance, which I think honestly should be the bigger debate,” said Mooney, a member of the House select committee studying the property tax issue.
“If we gut the system, communities get gutted,” Mooney said of the proposals for eliminating homestead taxes. “It’s not good for property values or for quality of life.”
Some critics contend that DeSantis is engaging in political posturing to portray himself as a conservative warrior.
Former state Sen. Jeff Brandes of St. Petersburg, a Republican whose term extended through Gov. Ron DeSantis’ first term as governor. (449x472, AR: 0.951271186440678)
“The reason he’s putting it out there is political – it’s about his run for president in 2028,” said former state Sen. Jeff Brandes of St. Petersburg, a Republican whose term extended through DeSantis’ first term as governor. He now runs a non-profit think tank, the Florida Public Policy Project.
A major reduction in homestead property taxes would be felt statewide by local governments, which depend heavily on property taxes to fund basic municipal services — police and fire protection, street construction and repair, stormwater infrastructure, parks and libraries.
Property taxes support about 28 percent of local government operations, according to an analysis by the Florida Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank generally considered moderate to liberal.
Taxing districts such as ports and airports would also be hit.
Local governments would feel pressure to replace their losses with increases in taxes on commercial and non-homestead residential property, sales taxes, fines and fees, said Hillsborough County Property Appraiser Bob Henriquez.
For DeSantis, a new cause
Throughout his tenure, DeSantis has sought to portray himself as one of the nation’s leading conservative warriors in causes including school choice, culture wars against “woke” ideology, abolishing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and promoting gun rights.
He hasn’t previously made cutting property taxes one of those issues. DeSantis made no such proposal during his first term, said Brandes, whose last Senate term coincided with DeSantis’ first term.
But lately, property taxes have become a conservative bandwagon – at least five other states are considering measures to cut homestead taxes, according to Realtor.com
And DeSantis poses a philosophical objection to homestead taxes: “Home ownership should mean you fully own your home, not be forced to pay rent to the government in the form of property taxes,” he has posted on X Oct. 22.
Without the rights and privileges protected by the government, ownership is meaningless, Henriquez said.
Taxation, the Hillsborough property appraiser said, is “a condition of ownership privileges that you receive – infrastructure, public safety, schools and so on. It’s a way of sustaining our system — we have certain property rights and certain obligations.”
And many of the services of local governments, such as police and fire protection, are directly related to protecting ownership rights, said Kevin Brickey, Hillsborough management and budget director.
To Brandes, DeSantis’s failure to produce a proposal suggests the governor isn’t really serious about the idea.
“It’s a concept, not a serious proposal – a serious proposal comes with details and research and a framework,” Brandes said.
Brandes noted that DeSantis will be out of office by the time the results of any major tax cut begin to be felt – “He doesn’t have to eat his own cooking.”
In response to DeSantis’ initiative to cut property taxes, the Legislature voted last year to put $1 million in the state budget to study the question – the study DeSantis vetoed – because “we know what needs to be done.”
Florida Rep. Michael Owen, R-Apollo Beach. (1280x720, AR: 1.7777777777777777)
It’s not that simple, said Rep. Mike Owen, R-Apollo Beach, another member of the House select committee.
Owen believes property taxes need to be cut, though he wouldn’t “frame it as a crisis.” One problem, he said, is that some counties depend far more on homestead taxes than others.
Owen noted that Manatee County, part of his district, with substantial sales tax revenue generated partly by tourists, depends much less on homestead taxes than other counties.
Florida has 29 “fiscally constrained” counties which are mostly rural with small populations and tax bases where 1 mill of property tax generates less than $5 million. Taxes on homesteads are a much bigger part of those counties’ budgets than in larger counties.
Those aren’t the only disparities in homestead taxation, noted Wenner of Taxwatch.
Wenner said property taxes overall have been increasing rapidly — about 40 percent in the last three years — largely because of rising property values.
He estimated that total homestead taxes levied have also increased, but largely because of a rapid increase in the number of homestead parcels as agricultural land turns into subdivisions.
Homeowners with longstanding Save Our Homes caps have been largely shielded from rising taxes, first-time homebuyers or those moving into the state aren’t, he said.
Owen said that means research and planning is needed before making major changes.
So why did DeSantis veto the money to study the issue?
“That’s a good question,” Owen said.
About the author: William March has written about politics in the Tampa Bay area for the past 40 years. He has worked for newspapers in his native North Carolina and for the Tampa Tribune, the Tampa Bay Times and the Associated Press in Florida. The Florida Trident is an investigative news outlet focusing on government accountability and transparency across Florida. The Trident was created and first published in 2022 by the Florida Center for Government Accountability, a non-profit organization that facilitates local investigative reporting across the state.