This op-ed originally appeared on Cleveland.com on February 22, 2026.
Ohio has some of the nation’s most stringent limits on property taxes.
For many Ohioans, those restrictions have kept property taxes from becoming prohibitively high. But for others, increasing property values have made property taxes unaffordable.
This has led anti-tax advocates to gather signatures for a constitutional amendment that would repeal taxes on land and buildings, known as real property.
This is a profoundly bad idea.
Think of practically anything you value in your community, and it’s probably supported by property taxes.
Public libraries get more than half their funds from property taxes.
They’re the biggest source of funding for public schools, which is where most property taxes go. More than $8 billion a year in property tax goes toward educating almost 1.5 million Ohio K-12 students.
Every county in Ohio has a property tax levy supporting services for those with developmental disabilities.
Health departments depend on property taxes to investigate measles outbreaks and control the West Nile virus.
Property taxes fund all manner of human services, including behavioral health and addiction services and those that protect children and the elderly from abuse and neglect.
In Cuyahoga County, such services are supported through two health and human service levies.
Townships, where more than a third of Ohioans live, don’t levy sales or income taxes, so they are particularly dependent on property taxes.
More than 3,000 township levies provide some combination of police, fire and EMS service.
Parks, community colleges, cities and villages all depend on property taxes.
Most property taxes have been approved by voters.
The property tax is the oldest, and the largest, tax in Ohio. It brings in more than $21 billion a year — and the proposal to repeal it contains no replacement.
To make up for the lost revenue, the General Assembly would have to boost the sales tax by nearly 7 cents, making the state’s overall average rate more than 14 percent.
That would be by far the highest in the United States.
The amount of local taxes required to replace property taxes varies widely.
For example, the conservative Tax Foundation figures it would require Monroe County to add a mind-boggling 24 percent to the income tax its residents pay.
Replacing property taxes with local sales taxes would mean an increase of more than 7 percentage points in most counties.
The General Assembly will not approve such steep increases. That means Ohioans would see huge cuts in education and services.
And here’s the kicker: If this proposal passes, it will likely cause an increase in your electric bill.
That’s because $2.5 billion in real property tax comes from fixed-sum levies, which — as the name states — raise a fixed amount.
Under current law, these would all have to be paid by the remaining property tax payors: public utilities, whose “tangible personal property” tax would not be affected by the repeal.
That $2.5 billion would double what utilities pay now. Doubtless they will pass some of it on to ratepayers.
Eliminating the real personal property tax would force either devastating cuts to critical public services or extraordinary increases in other taxes and higher utility costs.
Legislators have good options to provide property tax relief to Ohioans who need it, while preserving local revenues. Eliminating property taxes should be off the table.
So-called relief will hurt schools, not lower Columbus property taxes by a cent