Local officials warn of revenue losses for schools, fire services
Voters in four states — Wyoming, Florida, Oklahoma and North Carolina — will consider some form of property-tax limit or rollback on their November ballots, adding to bills already passed in more than 10 states since early 2025, including Iowa and Georgia. Lawmakers in additional states are still debating the issue.
The measures have largely been advanced through Republican-led legislatures and, in some cases, have been tied to state-level political platforms. They have drawn opposition from local government officials who say they will lose revenue needed for schools, fire services and community colleges. Many homeowners are looking for relief from housing costs that have been outpacing inflation.
Average annual property taxes for U.S. single-family homes rose about 34% between 2016 and 2025, reaching more than $4,400, according to Attom, a property data company. Several states have seen much higher increases. For many homeowners, the taxes compound other rising costs, including insurance, maintenance and home improvements.
“Property taxes are very visible,” and that makes them a target, said John Diamond, director of the Center for Tax and Budget Policy at Rice University. “A lot of people have to write that check every year in order to pay their taxes or when they go in to fill out their mortgage documents. Unlike sales tax, where you buy stuff and you don’t really know how much you’ve paid.”
Property taxes are also the single largest source of state and local government revenue, comprising 29% of total U.S. tax collections in 2023, according to the most recent Tax Foundation data.
In Wyoming, the Republican-led legislature and governor last year enacted a 25% property-tax exemption on the first $1 million of a primary home’s fair-market value, reducing the portion of home value that is taxed. Even with that change, Wyoming had one of the nation’s lowest effective property-tax rates, but rising home values have continued to push bills higher. Values for single-family homes and condos in the state have risen 52% since the beginning of 2019, according to Zillow. In the five years between 2019 and 2024, before the recent cut, average property taxes in the state were up 65%.
The state may not be done. A ballot measure this fall would let voters exempt 50% of their home values from property taxes, cutting bills further. The petition campaign behind the measure was launched by Brent Bien, a Republican running for governor in Wyoming’s Aug. 18 primary.
“We’re a blue-collar retirement state with roughly about 42% of the people living on fixed income,” Bien said in an interview. “Property taxes are unsustainable for a lot of folks.”
Jim Lewis, 80, said property taxes on the Jackson Hole, Wyo., home he and his wife bought in 2001 more than tripled to about $16,250 by 2022. The couple has since moved to a smaller property and now qualifies for a state tax exemption aimed at long-term owners. Lewis said he supports the planned cut.
“There are a lot of people here in Teton County and certainly elsewhere in Wyoming where property taxes are a significant piece of their expense,” Lewis said.
Property-tax cuts have come before. California has tight limits on annual increases — unless a home is sold — and other states cut property taxes in the 2000s before the housing busts. The U.S. is now in a renewed surge of anti-property-tax sentiment, said Jared Walczak, a senior fellow at the Tax Foundation, a right-of-center tax-policy nonprofit. The group broadly views property taxes as an efficient, pro-growth tax tied directly to services homeowners need, Walczak said.
“You have people who are mad about their higher tax burden joining with people who don’t believe property taxes should exist in the first place,” he said. “There’s always been a strain of conservatism that just distrusted any tax on property — in a more populist era, that strain is larger.”
Florida’s ballot measure, which would dramatically reduce property taxes, has drawn the most public attention. Cities there are already cutting spending to prepare for a possible massive revenue drop. A University of North Florida poll found that if the ballot language mentioned a possible $12 billion municipal shortfall over two years, support from likely voters fell from 61%, just above the 60% threshold the state requires for approval, to 45%.
Oklahoma’s ballot measure would set a 1.75% limit on how much annual property assessments can grow. North Carolina voters will consider a proposed constitutional amendment requiring state lawmakers to add property-tax growth limits. Both measures were launched by votes in the Republican-led state legislatures.
In Wyoming, the community colleges have already lost funding under last year’s cuts. Erin Taylor, executive director of the Wyoming Association of Community College Trustees, said the state’s eight community colleges have lost $14 million due to property-tax cuts in the past year. The Laramie County Fire Authority saw its budget for the most recent fiscal year slashed by more than one-third — about $800,000 — according to fire chief Jason Caughey. The mostly volunteer-staffed department has covered the gap by cutting its training budget and drawing on an emergency fund, but will struggle to absorb more cuts, he said.
“Our citizens will end up seeing the impact of that with delayed response times, and potentially with not as many firefighters,” Caughey said.
To address lost revenue, lawmakers in some states have proposed higher sales taxes or using state surpluses to fund local services. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a $10 billion property-tax-relief package last year and is also pushing to restrict local spending growth. Abbott has called for a law limiting annual growth in local spending to no more than 3.5%.
“Stop the spending that leads to property tax increases to begin with,” Abbott said at a February rally where he outlined a proposal for deeper property-tax cuts. Bien, the Wyoming Republican candidate, said he envisions covering lost property-tax revenue by scaling back government spending and re-prioritizing the programs local counties fund, while protecting essential services such as fire and emergency medical response.