Georgia’s Republican-led push to reduce or eliminate homeowner property taxes is gaining momentum alongside similar statewide efforts in Florida and North Dakota, as rising property values translate into higher tax bills for homeowners and intensify pressure on state and local budgets.
In Georgia, House Speaker Jon Burns of Newington said Wednesday that “No one should ever face the loss of their home because they can’t pay rent to the government,” framing the proposal as a way to prevent families from losing housing due to property-tax nonpayment.
The Georgia plan Burns described would phase out homeowner property taxes by 2032 and tell cities, counties and school districts to rely on current or new sales taxes instead. Burns’ proposal includes a shift that supporters say would reduce the portion of home value subject to property taxes—from currently shielding $5,000 in home value from taxation to $150,000 by 2031—before most homeowner property taxes would be abolished the following year.
The proposal faces hurdles beyond the legislature, including the need for Democratic support because a constitutional amendment would require a two-thirds vote, followed by voter approval in November. Lawmakers also would need to address how much revenue schools and local services would lose and whether sales taxes could be increased enough to cover the gap.
In Florida, GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis has said eliminating homeowner property taxes is a goal, with lawmakers currently considering phasing out nonschool property taxes on homeowners over 10 years. In the Sunshine State, local governments have challenged figures presented by state officials during related outreach.
Meanwhile, North Dakota’s approach has relied less on a broad shift in the tax base and more on using earnings from the state’s oil tax savings account to reduce homeowner property taxes gradually, with tax credits that officials say have already lowered or eliminated bills for many households. Officials said in December that the tax credit wiped out property taxes for 50,000 households in the prior year and reduced bills for nearly 100,000 more, at a cost of $400 million in state subsidies for the 2025 and 2026 tax years.
North Dakota Republican Gov. Kelly Armstrong said the program “works,” and that the state can build on it “to provide even more relief and get property taxes to zero for the vast majority of North Dakota homeowners.” The state’s policy also includes an expansion of its primary residence tax credit, from $500 to $1,600 a year, officials said.
The proposals reflect what Tax Foundation state tax policy vice president Manish Bhatt described as a broader “property tax revolt era,” saying, “We’re very much in this property tax revolt era, which is not unique, it’s not new. We’ve seen these revolts in the past.” He compared current efforts to backlash patterns that led to California’s Proposition 13 in 1978, which limited property tax rates and how much local governments could increase property valuations for tax purposes.
For Georgia homeowners, the pressure is personal as well as political. Tim Hodnett, a 65-year-old retiree in Lawrenceville, said his annual property tax bill rose from $2,000 to $3,000 between 2018 and 2024. Hodnett said he is disabled and living on $30,000 a year, and that he is set to receive a significant exemption tied to seniors in Gwinnett County that reduces about two-thirds of his bill through school property-tax exemptions, but he said he would like to eliminate the remaining $1,000 as well.
Economics is at the center of the political dispute: states and communities that cut homeowner property taxes must decide whether to reduce spending or replace the revenue from elsewhere. Adam Langley of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy said the “complete elimination” of homeowner property taxes would be “very difficult in most states and localities around the country, and undesirable in most places,” according to his comments.
In Georgia, Burns’ proposal would eliminate $5.2 billion in homeowner property taxes—more than a quarter of the $19.9 billion in property taxes collected in 2024—by instructing localities and schools to fall back on sales taxes. The plan’s design also matters for whether the revenue can actually be recaptured, because sales taxes do not support school funding the same way property taxes do in every community, and local governments and schools would remain limited to a combined 5% sales tax rate on top of the state’s 4% rate.
The Georgia proposal would also change how additional charges could work. Local governments could send homeowners yearly bills for specified services such as garbage pickup, street lighting, stormwater control and fire protection, while the proposal says lawmakers are not calling those charges a tax. Voters could also approve assessments for government or school improvements, and the plan’s backers said they have not yet decided whether property owners could lose homes for unpaid assessments.
Georgia’s Republicans are also seeking more immediate relief while working through longer-term changes. Burns wants to spend about $1 billion to cut property tax bills in 2026, though it remains unclear whether Gov. Brian Kemp would agree; a spokesperson declined comment.
Across the broader “revolt,” organizers have tried similar ballot initiatives in multiple states, with different results. The AP report said such efforts were defeated in North Dakota in 2024 and failed to make the ballot in Nebraska that year, while organizers in Michigan were pursuing ballot qualification for another initiative.
Supporters of the overall strategy argue that property taxes can function as a threat to homeownership, especially when families face financial stress or when property values rise faster than household incomes. Critics and policy analysts argue that property taxes are deeply tied to school and local services, and that replacing the revenue—especially at scale—may be constrained by the political and legal difficulty of raising alternative taxes.
It is unclear whether lawmakers can achieve the full homeowner property tax elimination now being pursued, but the push is putting school funding and local-government finance under renewed pressure in states where the political case for tax relief is increasingly finding traction with voters.