A proposed constitutional amendment to abolish all real property taxes in Ohio has cleared its first legal hurdle, forcing a hard question that homeowners, renters, and local officials alike will have to answer: if the state eliminates billions of dollars in property tax revenue, how much more would Ohioans need to pay in income taxes to fill the gap? The answer, based on federal tax data and the state’s own fiscal trajectory, suggests the swap would hit paychecks far harder than most supporters anticipate, with uneven consequences across Ohio’s 88 counties.
What the Petition Actually Proposes
The initiative petition, titled “Abolishment of Taxes on Real Property,” would add a new Section 14 to Article XII of the Ohio Constitution. The proposed language, available in full through the attorney general’s posted constitutional text, does not simply reduce property taxes or cap their growth. It would abolish taxes on real property outright and prohibit any future real property taxes from being levied. That scope is what distinguishes this effort from the incremental relief measures the legislature has pursued in parallel and from the periodic reassessment debates that typically dominate local tax politics.
The Ohio Attorney General’s Office reviewed the petition at the initial stage required by state law. In May 2025 it announced that the title and summary submitted by the petition committee met the legal standard of being “fair and truthful,” as outlined in the office’s public notice. Separately, the office published the certified ballot summary, confirming that the initial batch of signatures met statutory thresholds to move the process forward. That certification clears the way for the petition committee to begin collecting the far larger number of signatures required to place the question before voters. Acceptance at the title and summary stage does not guarantee a ballot appearance, but it does mean the legal vehicle is real and advancing through the process prescribed by Ohio law.
The Revenue Hole and the Income Tax Math
Attorney General Dave Yost has acknowledged the political energy behind the petition while warning about the fiscal reality it would create. In a July 2025 statement, Yost urged counties to coordinate on property tax reform, citing a quantified recent increase in property taxes and cautioning that the scale of revenue that would need to be replaced is enormous. His framing is significant: even a prominent Republican officeholder who has facilitated the petition process is signaling that full abolition, without a credible replacement plan, risks destabilizing local government budgets that fund schools, police, fire departments, libraries, and infrastructure. Local officials who have spent years navigating tight budgets see property tax receipts as the backbone of their operations, not a marginal revenue source that can be casually swapped out.
The most direct way to estimate the replacement cost is through the Internal Revenue Service’s county-level income and tax dataset for 2022, which breaks down adjusted gross income by county and is widely used to estimate local income tax bases. That federal income statistics series provides the denominator for any calculation converting a given revenue target into an implied income tax rate. Ohio’s property tax collections run into the billions annually, and dividing that figure by the adjusted gross income base across all 88 counties reveals that the income tax increase needed to offset the loss would not be trivial. It would stack on top of existing municipal and school district income taxes that many Ohioans already pay, as well as the state’s own income tax. Even a seemingly modest additional percentage point at the local level would translate into hundreds of dollars a year for middle-income households, with higher earners seeing much larger dollar increases.
Legislative Relief Versus Full Abolition
Ohio lawmakers have not been idle on property taxes, but their approach has been far more cautious than outright elimination. On Nov. 20, 2025, the Ohio Senate passed major reforms to the property tax system, and the governor subsequently signed legislation that includes House Bill 129, which implements a check on tax hikes by adjusting how reduction factors apply and limiting the speed at which bills can rise. According to the Senate’s own description, Ohioans will begin to see relief through that cap in January 2027. House Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima) also promoted House Bills 186 and 335, both designed to deliver property tax relief without eliminating the revenue stream entirely, largely by recalibrating formulas and expanding targeted credits rather than rewriting the tax base from scratch…