The big hot button issue in Ohio’s upcoming November election is … Property Taxes! The dramatic increase in home value over the past 10 years has lead to a similarly shocking increase in property taxes. Combined with the overall increase in cost-of-living and stagnation of wages/benefits for seniors this has lead to a serious cash crunch.

As a result Ohio legislators have proposed a large number of changes to property taxes, some of which were signed into law. At the same time, a group of Ohioans decided they wanted to eliminate property taxes entirely and have been working to get an amendment to the Ohio Constitution on the November ballot. They are still working to collect the required number of signatures, but there is a strong expectation that this issue will make it to the November ballot.

Historically, Ohio relied almost exclusively on property taxes. It wasn’t until the mid-20th century that sales and income taxes were introduced to relieve the burden on property owners and provide more stable revenue for a growing state.

Property tax is Ohio’s oldest tax, predating statehood. In the early 1800s, it was the primary way the government funded itself.

Before 1935, Ohio had no state sales tax. The Great Depression changed that (due to deficits created by massive number of property tax defaults)

Ohio was relatively late to the income tax game. For over 150 years, the state avoided it.

Not every level of government is able to impose any kind of tax. Ohio state law is very specific about who is allowed to tax, what taxes they are allowed to impose, and the maximum level of those taxes. The following table is for 2025.

*The state stopped levying a general property tax in the early 20th century, though it still oversees the rules for how local governments collect it. **Only with voter approval; not all school districts have an income tax.

If property tax is eliminated then townships in Ohio are going to be the most impacted. As you can see in the above chart, property tax is the only way for townships to generate revenue.

Today, townships pay for fire, EMS, police, roads, zoning, and parks/recreation. In 2025 Bainbridge Township had revenue of nearly $18.8M, of which $13.9M (74%) came from property taxes. Total expenses for 2025 came to $18M.

Breaking down the township’s expenses below, we see that Police, Fire, and Roads account for 69% of the total expenditures.

Basically, Geauga can, under the current rules, impose a 1.5% sales tax on all taxable purchases made in the county. As of 2025, the county already levies a 1% sales tax. In 2023, the latest year available, the county had approximately $72.86M in total general revenue of which $33.2M was from property tax, $22.4M from sales tax, and then 17.3M from a mixture of grants, investment earnings, and vehicle tax.

Assuming that an increase in sales tax rate (from 1% to 1.5%) does not change shopping patterns, then Geauga would bring in approximately $33.6M from sales tax. The increase of $11.2M would offset only 1/3 of the loss of the property tax (net loss of $22.4M).

In 2025, Geauga had a total revenue of $110.7M and total expenses of $105.6M. Expenses break down as:

To makeup the shortfall, the county would have to cut 21% of expenses.

Ohio’s revenue will not be impacted by loss of property tax as the state no longer utilizes that tax.

The amount of money that each school district gets from the State varies with the annual state budget and is based on a complicated and subjective set of metrics. Basically, the more the school gets from property taxes, the less they will get from the state in future years.

If you look at a school like Kenston, the school gets 75% of it’s revenue from property taxes. That is a $33.2M gap that would be created against an operating budget of $43.7M and outstanding obligations of $23.2M.

The Treasurer, Seth Cales, has stated that the district would run out of cash by April 2027 if property taxes are eliminated and no alternative plan is put into place.

The other piece of this to consider is that Ohio funds to school districts are computer “per pupil”. At the same time, there is a significant effort by the Statehouse to push students into private schools using public funds. Vouchers are available for every student in Ohio, regardless of income. The state spent $731M in the 2023/24 school year to enable approximately 65,000 students to go to private schools. Each time one of these students leave their home public school, the number of pupils drops resulting in lower state funding to that district.

While there is plenty of fear mongering out there, if this amendment gets enough signatures to get on the ballot and it gets approved it will start the clock on politicians across the spectrum to develop a solution. The amendment as written would go into effect on Jan 1, 2027. This means that the typical February property tax bill would not occur and the governmental entities would start to feel the pain from the lack of cash.

It is clear that the current lame-duck governor and Statehouse don’t want to implement any further changes to the property tax situation prior to the November election. Statehouse representatives will take office on Jan 1, 2027. The new governor will take office on Jan 11. This gives the new state government less than two months to act. Which is frankly not likely. In effect, we can with high confidence expect the February property tax bills to not be paid out.

Gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has made it clear that his plan is to eliminate the Ohio income tax (in a gradual manner).

He has also stated that he believes that if the property tax is eliminated it can be managed by reducing the size of state government. He has not stated anything (that I can find) about how the impact on county, local, or schools would be managed.

Democrat candidate Amy Acton has stated she doesn’t see a need to raise income taxes, rather the budget priorities need to be changed. Her platform focuses on targeted relief rather than total elimination. She supports measures like expanding the Homestead Exemption and implementing a "circuit breaker", a mechanism that provides state-funded tax credits to low- and middle-income residents when their property taxes exceed a certain percentage of their income.

Clearly the choice of new governor will have a significant impact on how the state responds to the people’s vote on the amendment.

Schools are allowed to put income tax levy’s on the ballot. It is hard to imagine that such a levy would be able to get on the May 2027 ballot, but it is possible. Regardless, any such levy would not go into effect until fall 2027 at the absolute earliest. Schools will have to find a way to scrimp and save until that point.

Counties can raise sales tax to the maximum 1.5%. But as seen from the example of Geauga county, that would leave the county in a $22M hole. 59 of Ohio’s 88 counties are already at the 1.5% limit and those counties would have no flexibility to respond without state-level changes.

Townships would basically be screwed. They would have to go ask the county for money, but the county is already in a massive hole so they have no money to spare. That means they would have to go to the state to try to get money to cover police, fire, EMS, etc. Most likely all non-life critical services would be immediately suspended and critical services cut back to an absolute minimum based on how much money the township has managed to save.

Municipalities would all increase their income tax to the 3% maximum. Like the counties, this would help, but would not cover the cuts required.

I’m just going to hypothesize here because so much is up in the air at the moment. I do think the following are very possible - even likely - changes that would happen in Ohio over the 5-10 year horizon.

Title image is Property Tax by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Pix4free.org