Of the nearly a thousand bills that were introduced in the state legislature this year, around 50 deal with property taxes. Several passed with the goal of helping homeowners with their soaring property tax bills, as a group continues to push for a ballot issue that would abolish all property taxes in Ohio.
2025 started with a report listing 21 recommendations on property taxes from a bipartisan joint committee from the last general assembly.
A couple of those ideas made it into the budget Republican leaders introduced in April, which cut income taxes through a 2.75% flat tax. But there was a brand new idea on property taxes: a limit on the carryover balances held by the state’s more than 600 school districts, which Republicans said totaled about $10.5 billion. House Finance Chair Brian Stewart (R-Ashville) said they could hold onto 25% of their operating budgets in reserve, and the rest of that money collected from voter-approved levies would go back to homeowners who paid it.
“This is immediate relief that does not cost the state money. We're not going to shift the tax burden from one set of taxpayers to another," Stewart said when introducing the GOP budget. "We believe that those monies are better in the taxpayers pocket than in the school districts bank account just accumulating, just sitting over time.”
School districts howled. Paul Imhoff with the Buckeye Association of School Administrators told a House committee in April that those reserve balances allow them to preserve bond ratings, to improve facilities or other long-term goals.
"This change would result in a catastrophic loss of billions of dollars in school revenue, maybe as much as $5.1 billion, seemingly overnight, while also eroding the hard-fought increases for schools in this budget," Imhoff said. "Schools will face immediate and massive cuts to student programs, and nearly every school district will be forced to place a levy on the ballot far sooner than planned, while also having to return to the ballot on a more frequent basis in the future."
Vetoes push property tax law changes
That 25% cap was raised to 30% in the final House budget, then became 50% in the Senate, and then 40% in the final budget in June. But Gov. Mike DeWine vetoed it, along with three other property tax provisions that he said needed more discussion.
Lawmakers discussed an immediate override, but Sen. Bill Blessing (R-Colerain Twp.) said he was concerned those ideas weren’t going to provide enough relief for struggling taxpayers.
"People are going to clamor for more, which is going to lead to more policy changes on this," Blessing said in an interview in July. "I'm just worried that we start shifting away from property taxation to, for example, sales taxation, which is much more regressive. And it's just going to lead to a place that people really don't like."
DeWine set up a working group of former lawmakers and local officials who put out a report in September. About half of their 20 recommendations were similar to those in the report at the start of the year. For instance, they suggested a circuit breaker triggering property tax breaks based on a percentage of income, an expansion of the homestead tax exemption and a tax deferral program.
Lawmakers didn’t pass those bills, but did approve measures to cap spikes on increases in levies along with a state-paid owner occupied tax credit, to change the formula by which a school district’s guaranteed minimum tax rate is calculated and to allow county budget commissions to reduce millage of property tax levies. Republicans said that would bring more than $2 billion in tax relief, but admitted taxpayers’ bills wouldn’t be slashed. Democrats were mixed in their support.
Effort to abolish property taxes rolls on
But the all-volunteer group that wants to eliminate all property taxes isn’t impressed. The Committee to Abolish Property Taxes started in May to gather more than 443,000 valid signatures for a constitutional amendment on next fall’s ballot. The group’s Brian Massie says it would be up to lawmakers to replace the $23.9 billion in all local property taxes collected.
“The committee is saying, 'you blew it when you didn’t think about the average citizen.' And now we’re going to get the signatures and let the citizens vote," Massie said in an interview. When asked to clarify if he meant the effort would go forward regardless of what lawmakers do, Massie replied: "No matter what. They could tell us, oh, the schools are, we're going to come up with some other funding mechanism for schools—it still doesn't matter to us.”
Massie said he won't reveal how many signatures the group has secured. The deadline is July 1.
And in spite of the frustration over property taxes, voters approved more than 65% of school levies and 90% of library levies on November’s ballot. Rep. David Thomas (R-Jefferson), who sponsored many of the 50 or so property tax related bills so far, wrote on social media: “We can’t protect taxpayers from tax hikes we choose ourselves at the ballot box.” He’s sponsored a bill to require property taxes get 60% voter approval to pass, not a simple majority.
“I think that there should be some type of recognition that more community support for higher taxes is a better way to actually increase that process," Thomas said in an interview.
Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima) said that’s not going to pass. Other ideas include a statewide property tax of 20 mills with a 1.75% increase in the sales tax and a constitutional amendment to allow land value taxation.
As the 2026 race for governor heats up, property taxes will remain a hot issue. A report released in September concluded Ohio near the bottom in how much the state spends on K-12 schools but has the eighth highest property tax rate in the country. That report also recommended a circuit breaker and a property tax exemption, but suggested the state pay make up the hundreds of millions of dollars that local governments and school districts would lose with those tax relief options.
