K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Confronting the New Property Tax Revolt
Jared Walczak:
- Property values have skyrocketed in recent years, rising almost 27 percent faster than inflation since 2020, which yields dramatically higher property taxes in jurisdictions that fail to adjust millages (rates) downward.
- Legitimate discontent over high property taxes is fueling a movement to significantly curtail or even eliminate the property tax, but many of the policy solutions offered, like assessment limits and tax swaps, create more problems than they solve, distorting property markets and undermining long-term housing affordability.
- Despite its unpopularity, the property tax is relatively economically efficient, and shifting to any alternative tax would harm economic growth.
- Well-designed levy limits can provide homeowners with much-needed relief from soaring property tax bills without the harms associated with other policy responses, and narrowly tailored circuit breakers can help ensure that low-income families are not priced out of their homes.
- The property tax is a tax worth saving—and therefore worth reforming. Policymakers should work to constrain the runaway growth of property tax liability witnessed in some parts of the country but should not overcompensate by eliminating or dramatically curtailing an economically efficient tax.
