Property tax reform has been a hot topic across the country this year, especially in Republican-led states, as lawmakers and politicians try to offer relief to homeowners struggling with higher bills; and experts believe it will remain at the forefront in 2026—with many states continuing to push for the complete elimination of property taxes.
“Property tax reform is going to continue to be an issue going into 2026 because it was largely not resolved in 2025 or in years prior, and taxpayers are still clamoring for relief,” Manish Bhatt, a senior Policy Analyst with the Center for State Tax Policy at the Tax Foundation, told Newsweek.
“Unfortunately, much of the action is in haste and not using sound tax policy principles,” Bhatt added. “But nevertheless, we do anticipate the property tax conversation to continue to be a robust one in 2026.”
Why Are So Many States Seeking Property Tax Reform?
The main reason why so many states are considering reform, in some cases drastic, is that property taxes have risen all across the country since the pandemic, weighing heavily on homeowners already strained by other rising housing costs.
Between 2019 and 2024, property taxes surged by 30 percent nationwide, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), as homes appreciated quickly due to a surge in demand clashing with chronically low inventory.
“Coming out of the pandemic, we saw 40, 50, 60 percent surges in property values and valuations in some places—in some places even more,” Bhatt said. “There was a real fear among taxpayers that they may face higher property tax bills—and there’s a push to have the legislature act,” he added.
Lawmakers’ approaches to reforming property taxes, however, vary wildly across the country—from improving transparency around levying the tax to eliminating it altogether.
What Changes Are Coming?
For many lawmakers, the approach is obvious: if higher property taxes are the problem, the solution is to cut them drastically—or even eliminate them. While a majority of experts are critical of this logic, many of the ongoing efforts to reform property taxes across the country currently focus on these goals.
Here is a recap of what we can expect next year in the states approaching significant property tax reform, based on what has happened in 2025.
Florida
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who will end his third term next year and will not be able to run for reelection, has repeatedly said he supports the complete abolition of property taxes in the state.
Lawmakers this year have introduced several bills with the goal of lowering non-school property taxes or even eliminating them, and it is yet unclear which one is going to prevail.
While lawmakers seem unwilling to completely end property taxes and a recent survey revealed a majority of Floridians do not actually want such drastic action, Bhatt said that such efforts, “whether they’re in Florida or they’re elsewhere, should be considered very seriously.”
Lawmakers in Florida and elsewhere “should be specifically focused on the economic harms that might come from eliminating the property tax and replacing it with revenue, say from a sales tax or even an income tax,” Bhatt said.
As Florida does not have an income tax, it would need to replace lost revenues with some higher levies—potentially higher sales duties, as many experts have suggested.
“If they were to get rid of their property, they would still have to balance their budgets,” Kamolika Das, local policy director at ITEP, told Newsweek. “I think that’s the other fundamental misunderstanding—if you are cutting property taxes or cutting any type of property taxes, really, that doesn’t automatically make the cost disappear. The cost will stay the same, at least some baseline costs. And so they’ll have to just offset it somehow.”
According to Bhatt, the plan to eliminate property taxes “should be one that includes educating voters on what the alternate revenue sources would be and what the economic outcome of those sources would entail and what kind of distortions they might cause. And that’s not currently being done,” he said.
“We’re asking many, in many cases, the wrong question is being asked. Residents are being asked, ‘Do you want to pay lower or no property taxes?’ But the right question is, ‘Would you rather pay an income tax or a sales tax to offset your property tax bill or to eliminate it all together?’”
Illinois
A bill—SB 1862—introduced to the Illinois Statehouse early in 2025, known as the 30-year homestead exemption, amended the state’s property tax code, exempting homeowners who have owned and lived in their primary residence for 30 years from paying taxes on the home.
According to the bill, “taxpayers who have been granted an exemption to reapply on an annual basis. Provides that the assessor or chief county assessment officer may determine the eligibility of residential property to receive the homestead exemption by application, visual inspection, questionnaire, or other reasonable methods.”
For Das, this bill represents a more sound solution to higher property tax bills than abolishing them altogether—but that is a “pretty low bar,” she said. The measure, however, is still ineffective in her opinion.
“Any type of exemption for homeowners who’ve owned their homes for 30 years is very poorly targeted, it’s inequitable, and it would just create pretty serious, not just fiscal, but fairness, problems,” she said.
“This is really going to be hurting people like young families who are just trying to buy their first home. Because again, you’re really prioritizing these kinds of long-term, typically wealthier, homeowners instead,” she added. “And it would significantly erode the local tax base.”
Kansas
In Kansas, House Concurrent Resolution (HCR) 5014 was introduced early in the year. The legislation proposed to amend article 11 of the state constitution, adding a new section that would establish the Freedom From Taxes Fund and the Kansas Citizens Freedom Review Board.
This board would be authorized to review tax exemptions and approve or eliminate them, as well as ending the state-imposed property taxes and income and privilege taxes. Savings from the elimination of the exemptions would be placed in a fund, with the idea of using them to eventually abolish state-imposed property taxes.
“Theoretically, a review board that regularly evaluates tax exemptions sounds good on paper,” Das said. “We’ve long argued that any type of tax expenditure should be reviewed as rigorously as direct funding, there should be clear goals, date on beneficiaries,” she added. “We should be collecting evidence on how effective they are.”
But Das thinks that the proposal creates a problem within the solution by delegating this reviewing power to prove or eliminate the exemptions to a citizen board.
“That is extremely risky because tax exemptions are really complex policy tools, there’s a lot of legal implications involved,” she said. “You have to think about, you know exactly who’s gonna be impacted across both like an income distribution, you know just thinking about like the economic ramifications of it. And so, you know, you really want the people making those decisions to have a lot of technical expertise,” she added.
Das compares it to “outsourcing medical decisions to people who are not doctors, in a way,” she said. “It’s just really risky.”
Ohio
Ohio lawmakers sent five property tax reform bills to Governor Mike DeWine this November, which would give county officials power to cut levies previously approved by voters, create more room for tax reductions, limit the growth of tax bills to the rate of inflation, and shift the burden of proof in valuation disputes.
But there is also an ongoing grassroots effort going on in the state which is trying to collect enough signatures to put the question of abolishing property taxes to voters next year.
According to Das, this grassroots movement is unlikely to bring home concrete results next year.
“Ohio GOP leaders haven’t endorsed any type of huge property tax elimination or anything like that,” she said. “And I think part of that is that there’s just some understanding that they actually do really need that revenue.”
The state, she said, much like Florida, cannot afford that sort of measure “without either massive cuts to education or local services, or large increases in sales taxes or other taxes that are pretty regressive.”
Pennsylvania
There is currently also a proposal in Pennsylvania, Senate Bill (SB) 929, to eliminate the collection of school taxes across the state. The bill would prevent school districts from collecting property taxes beginning on July 1, 2029. To make up for the loss in revenues, sales and income taxes would be increased in the state.
Das, who lives in Pennsylvania, said this bill has not really received massive public attention in the state.
“I have not heard very much about it, and I think a lot of the people who do push for it are doing it for political posturing,” she said. “I don’t think anyone is serious about this whatsoever.”
School property taxes raise between $15 to $17 billion in Pennsylvania, Das said. “It’s like the single largest local revenue source,” she said. “It’s just completely unrealistic” to eliminate property taxes in the state.
Texas
Finally, there is Texas, where voters have already passed three constitutional amendments reforming property taxes.
House Bill (HB) 9 would increase the business personal property tax exemption from $2,500 to $125,000. Senate Bill (SB) 4 would raise the mandatory school district residence homestead exemption to $140,000. And Senate Bill (SB) 23 would increase the mandatory school district residence homestead exemption for people over 65 and disabled individuals to $200,000.
Das is skeptical of the impact of these reforms as well. “You’re gonna have these substantial cuts, but a lot of them are going towards people who don’t actually need them,” she said.
“You’re talking about a place again that doesn’t have income tax revenue, and so already the way revenues are created is extremely regressive, they already harm people at the bottom the most,” she added.
The type of property tax reforms backed by voters in November “would sort of just continue that, because again there’s no focus on renters, no focus on young families, on the lowest earners,” she said.
