Property Taxes

Question A: Replacing property taxes in Ohio with higher sales and income tax rates will reduce the volatility of tax payments for Ohio households.

Question B: Removing property taxes will decrease overall per pupil spending in Ohio’s public schools.

Question A: Replacing property taxes in Ohio with higher sales and income tax rates will reduce the volatility of tax payments for Ohio households.

Economist	Institution	Opinion	Confidence	Comment
Jonathan Andreas	Bluffton University	Disagree	7	Property taxes are one of the most stable kinds of taxes. Arguably, this creates more potential cash-flow hardship than an income tax because property taxes do not fluctuate with income, but if you want low volatility, property taxes are one of the top sources.
David Brasington	University of Cincinnati	Uncertain	9	it will for farmers, but not for most people
Ron Cheung	Oberlin College	Disagree	7
Kevin Egan	University of Toledo	Strongly Disagree	10	Sales and income fluctuate with the business cycle. Having property taxes, especially taxes directly on the value of the land (not what is built on it) is one of the first-best tax options due to the amount of land to be taxed does not change.
Kenneth Fah	Ohio Dominican University	Uncertain	9
Vinnie Gajjala	Tiffin Univeristy	Disagree	8
Will Georgic	Ohio Wesleyan University	Strongly Disagree	7	It is not in Ohioans interest to eliminate property taxation in the state. Property taxes are the most efficient taxes that we can collect, short of instituting a land tax. We will need to replace a significant portion of this lost revenue with more distortionary taxes. Given the State's efforts and intentions to eliminate the State income tax, eliminating property taxation will lay the groundwork for an incredibly uncertain tax environment for the coming years with new sets of winners and losers who will likewise push to further shift the tax burden onto yet another group.
Bob Gitter	Ohio Wesleyan University	Uncertain	7	One’s income and spending on taxable goods can vary, but there would be less volatility with these taxes in terms of a share or income.
Christian Imboden	Bowling Green State University	Uncertain	8
Charles Kroncke	Mount Saint Joseph University	Strongly Agree	10	This will mainly benefit wealthy older people who don't work. This will not help working class younger people who spend their income on consumer goods.
Bill LaFayette	Regionomics	Uncertain	5	If property taxes are eliminated, they must be replaced somehow. The two most likely candidates are income taxes and sales taxes, but it is hard to imagine that the General Assembly will vote to raise either. Of the two, sales taxes are by far the worse choice because they fall most heavily on lower-income households. While we have to figure out a way to ease the property tax burden on lower-income homeowners, eliminating them altogether is a bad, bad idea.
Trevon Logan	Ohio State University	Disagree	9
Joe Nowakowski	Muskingum University	Disagree	8
Curtis Reynolds	Kent State University	Disagree	6	This argument would hinge on state income and sales taxes being held constant from year to year and that is not guaranteed. Additionally, higher income or higher expenditures in a year would trigger higher taxes under those systems (whether that is `volatile' depends on whether people are able to anticipate correctly). It is true that property taxes can jump for some people but that is due to the insanely complex way that property taxes are handled in Ohio. For example full assessments in each county happen every 6 years (partial every 3 years) which means property values can change a lot between assessments. Reforming that would reduce some of this. Further, eliminating the `tax reduction factor' that was put in place in 1976 would greatly simplify the system. People don't know but currently if there is property appreciation in a locality, for the most part that does not mean that schools/libraries/police/fire get more money. In fact, the effective rate people pay is dropped. This is why there are so many tax levies that have to be passed. Just to keep up with inflation new levies need to be added on top of existing levies. That creates a lot of volatility over time.
Ejindu Ume	Miami University	Strongly Disagree	8	Property taxes are less volatile than sales and income taxes.
Kathryn Wilson	Kent State University	Disagree	5

Question B: Removing property taxes will decrease overall per pupil spending in Ohio’s public schools.

Economist	Institution	Opinion	Confidence	Comment
Jonathan Andreas	Bluffton University	Agree	3	It depends on whether the government raises other taxes to replace the lost revenue. Because property taxes are more efficient than many other taxes that local governments levy, it can be hard to replace them so it is likely that revenues will go down which will hurt schools. For example, when California passed a constitutional ammendment via referendum to limit property taxes, they saw revenues decline despite raising other taxes to amongst the highest in the nation. Thus, California got a high-tax reputation despite only levying about half the tax rate on property that Texas does.
David Brasington	University of Cincinnati	Uncertain	9	Ohio already has the option of school district income taxes; the effect on spending depends on how much voters decide to shift from property to income taxes
Ron Cheung	Oberlin College	Agree	8
Kevin Egan	University of Toledo	Strongly Agree	10	It would be more fair and efficient if schools were funded more at the state/federal level and less hyper-locally to balance out richer vs. poorer neighborhoods, but just taking away property taxes to fund all schools and all other local public goods hurts everyone.
Kenneth Fah	Ohio Dominican University	Agree	9
Vinnie Gajjala	Tiffin Univeristy	Agree	9
Will Georgic	Ohio Wesleyan University	Strongly Agree	8	The first order effect of eliminating property taxes is a loss of billions of dollars of funding for Ohio's public schools. It seems unlikely that the State and localities would increase income or sales taxes enough to fully offset this loss, especially given previous efforts to eliminate state income taxation.
Bob Gitter	Ohio Wesleyan University	Strongly Agree	9	In theory, it might not if the State of Ohio would spend more on education and local income taxes were enacted. I doubt that would happen, though.
Christian Imboden	Bowling Green State University	Uncertain	8
Charles Kroncke	Mount Saint Joseph University	Strongly Agree	10	The "good school" neighborhoods will fade away.
Bill LaFayette	Regionomics	Agree	9	Eliminating property taxes removes the key local source of public school funding. Without a huge increase in funding from the state, the only alternative would be a school district income tax. This exists in some jurisdictions, but it might be a heavy lift to ask voters elsewhere to approve a new tax with a rate high enough to make the district whole.
Trevon Logan	Ohio State University	Agree	7
Joe Nowakowski	Muskingum University	Agree	8
Curtis Reynolds	Kent State University	Strongly Agree	10	Based solely on this amendment the answer is yes because in Ohio about two-thirds of property taxes go to local schools (the rest go to local libraries, police and fire departments, etc.). The amendment says nothing about what kinds of taxes will be enacted to replace that funding. I am very concerned that the answer will be "not enough" since the state legislature has been lowering income taxes for years - and I don't expect that to change - and I am not sure that residents of the state will be willing to the pay the massively higher sales taxes. To give a sense: Ohio's real property tax generated $18.5 billion in 2024. The sales tax brought in $13.9 billion and the income tax brought in $10 billion. I am in favor of moving away from property taxes to fund local schools since that approach leads to unequal funding that violates the state constitution (see the DeRolph decision of the state supreme court in 1997) but eliminating those taxes is a terrible idea.
Ejindu Ume	Miami University	Strongly Disagree	9	Property taxes fund public schools, this would resort in less funding and spending per pupil
Kathryn Wilson	Kent State University	Uncertain	6	It depends on whether the property tax is replaced by sales/income tax and how much legislators designate towards education. There would certainly be districts where per pupil spending falls (the highest spending districts), but it is not clear what effect it would have on the overall spending per pupil across the state.