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Editorial · Amendment 3 · November 3, 2026 ballot

The “No Property Tax” Amendment: What It Really Does to Your Bill, Your Rent, and Your County

Florida will vote on the largest property-tax change since Save Our Homes. It is being sold as the end of property taxes. It is not that. It is a $250,000 homestead exemption on everything except school taxes, a five-year penalty for newcomers, a tighter cap for landlords, and a promise about “core services” that means less than it sounds. Here is what the text says, why Tallahassee wrote it, and what it does — in dollars — to a renter, a working-class homeowner, a median condo buyer, and a waterfront owner in Sarasota County. Then: how the county could get its $87,088,073 back, and from whom.

The sixty-second version

Part one

What you are actually voting on

Start with the words. A “mill” is one dollar of tax per $1,000 of taxable value. An “exemption” is value the tax never touches. Today a homesteaded Sarasota home gets $25,000 off for every levy plus another $25,000 off for every levy except schools — a $50,000 non-school exemption in practice. Everything below is measured against that.[1]

The exemption jumps, then indexes

Non-school homestead exemption rises to $150,000 on January 1, 2027 and $250,000 on January 1, 2028, then grows with inflation every year after. For most owners that is $100,000 more than today in year one and $200,000 more from year two. It is permanent — there is no sunset.

Schools are carved out

School-district levies keep today's $25,000 exemption, full stop. In unincorporated Sarasota County schools are about 53¢ of every property-tax dollar. So the "no property tax" amendment leaves more than half of a typical bill exactly where it is.

Newcomers wait five years

Anyone who did not have a Florida permanent residence on December 31, 2026 gets only a $50,000 non-school exemption for 5 years — today's amount. The nurse who relocates from Ohio in 2027 pays the full current bill while the neighbor in the identical house saves $1,078.

Landlords and businesses get a tighter cap

Non-homestead property — rentals, second homes, commercial — can rise in assessed value no more than 5% a year instead of 10%. That is a real benefit to owners of rental property in a rising market. Nothing requires it to reach a tenant.

Renters: a 'may,' not a 'shall'

The text says the Legislature 'may, by general law, provide for property tax relief for residential renters.' It does not say how, when, or with what money. As written, the renter provision is a placeholder.

'Full elimination' is a local option, not a mandate

The ballot summary says the amendment 'requires, through general law, a schedule for full elimination.' The body does something narrower: it orders the Legislature to write a procedure by which a county or city may exempt more — 'up to all remaining assessed valuation' — if its own board chooses to. Whether Sarasota's homestead tax ever reaches zero is a decision for five county commissioners, not for this vote.

The “core services” clause, read closely

The summary tells voters that county and city property taxes may be used “solely” for core services: law enforcement, fire, EMS, roads, water, sewer, stormwater, parks. That list is in the text. So is item (g), which permits property taxes to fund “the operations and administration of county officers and commissioners … and the expenditures approved by such county officers or governing bodies, except those expenditures prohibited by general law.” In plain English: the commission may still spend property tax on anything it votes for, unless Tallahassee passes a law forbidding it. The clause is less a restriction than a new power for the Legislature to decide, item by item, what Sarasota County is not allowed to buy with your property taxes. Watch for that statute.[1]

Part two

Why Tallahassee did this

The Governor's argument, made for two years and repeated when he called the June 2026 special session, is that Florida's local governments have let spending run far ahead of population and inflation, and that the property-tax system lets them do it without ever voting for a tax increase. His own preference was bigger — rebate checks, then outright elimination for homesteads. The Legislature sent voters this compromise instead: a large fixed exemption, schools protected, and a leash on future local spending. He has said it is not the plan he asked for and that he supports it anyway.

Whatever you think of the Governor, on the mechanism he is describing Sarasota County is Exhibit A. The county's own Budget Reference Guide shows it:[2]

Sarasota County countywide millage, taxable value and property-tax revenue, FY2023–FY2026
YearMillageTaxable valueValue growthProperty-tax revenue
FY20233.4463$82,542,301,373+17.3%$270,244,551
FY20243.4381$94,200,672,951+13.9%$307,679,781
FY20253.3856$103,938,478,583+8.7%$334,301,145
FY20263.3842$110,028,666,431+5.8%$353,742,696

+30.9%

County property-tax revenue, FY2023 to FY2026 — while the millage rate went down.[2]

+99%

County spending plus debt, 2015–2025, against +24.4% population.

$11,860,000,000

Statewide non-school local revenue removed each year once fully phased in, per the state's Revenue Estimating Conference.[5]

That is the escalator the amendment is aimed at: a rate held “flat” on a base that grew 17%, then 14%, then 9%, then 6%. Every commissioner could truthfully say they never raised taxes, and every homeowner could truthfully say their bill went up every year. The amendment does not slow the base. It simply takes $200,000 of every homestead out of it, permanently, and lets local boards explain the rest. It is a blunt instrument aimed at a real problem — and it hands the county a $87,088,073 decision about who pays next.

Part three

Your bill, household by household

The table below uses the county's own FY2026 rates for unincorporated Sarasota County: about 6.08 mills for schools and 5.39 mills for everything the amendment touches — county, EMS, hospital district, water management, navigation district.[2] As a check, the County Administrator's own $350,000 example bill is $3,594.49 today and $3,056.62 at the $150,000 stage; this model gives $3,593 and $3,054.[3] The last column shows what each household would pay if the county chose to recover its FY2029 loss by raising its own millage the 0.6214 mills the administrator said it would take.

Annual property-tax bill by household type under today's law, the 2027 stage, and the 2028 stage, with the saving and the cost of a county millage backfill
HouseholdToday ($50k)2027 ($150k)2028 ($250k)Saving / yrShare of billIf county backfills +0.6214 mills

Market-rate renter

Two-bedroom unit; landlord's assessed value ≈ $300,000, no homestead

No bill of your own; landlord pays ≈$3,441 either way$0—+$186 to landlord (≈$16/mo into rent)

Live Local / income-restricted renter

Unit rented under the 2023 Live Local Act 'missing middle' exemption (≤120% of area median income)

No bill of your own; landlord already 75–100% exempt under Live Local$0——

Working-class homeowner

Bought 2019; Save Our Homes has held assessed value to $280,000

$2,790$2,251$1,712−$1,07838.6%+$19

Median-value homesteader

Assessed at the county's mid-2026 median value, $373,100

$3,858$3,319$2,780−$1,07827.9%+$76

Upper-income homesteader

Waterfront or west-of-Trail home assessed at $1,500,000

$16,784$16,245$15,706−$1,0786.4%+$777

Snowbird / second-home owner

Gulf-side condo assessed at $800,000, no Florida homestead

$9,176$9,176$9,176$00.0%+$497

New Floridian arriving in 2027

Relocates for a job, buys the $373,100 median home, files homestead

$3,858$3,858$3,858$00.0%+$201

Inside a city, add the city's line

City residents pay a municipal levy on top of the county's, and the exemption applies to it too. At the $250,000 stage a homesteader with at least that much assessed value saves, in addition to the $1,078 above:[7]

  • +$753North Port · 3.7667 mills
  • +$769Venice · 3.8450 mills
  • +$655Sarasota · 3.2730 mills
  • +$392Longboat Key · 1.9600 mills

A North Port homesteader at the median therefore saves about $1,831 a year fully phased in; a Longboat Key homesteader about $1,470. Longboat's own manager expects the Town to lose $705,000 in year one and $1,400,000 a year after that, with 76% of its property tax going to public safety and public works.[6]

Part four

Renters, working-class owners, median buyers, and the wealthy: the honest split

The question we were asked to answer is blunt: if this passes, does the working class bear the brunt, or do costs fall on the wealthy to recoup the county's budget? The answer has two halves, and they point in different directions.

The front end: the exemption itself

On the owner side this is a progressive tax cut. Because the exemption is a fixed $250,000, the $280,000 house in North Port or Englewood and the $1.5 million house on Siesta Key save the same $1,078. For the modest house that is nearly two-fifths of the entire bill and almost all of its non-school tax. For the waterfront house it is six cents on the dollar. The retiree on a fixed income in a paid-off 1990s ranch is the biggest winner in the county, by percentage.

The people left out of the front end are not the wealthy. They are renters — who get a “may” — and newcomers, who wait five years. In a county where the median rent rose more than half in four years and a third of parcels are homesteaded, that is a large share of the working population.[4]

The back end: filling the hole

This is where the working class can lose. The county does not absorb $87,088,073; it routes it. Four routes exist, and each one has a different name on the invoice:

  1. Raise the millage. The administrator's figure is +0.6214 mills. Who pays: everyone on their remaining taxable value. The $280,000 homesteader pays about $19 more; the $1.5 million homesteader about $777; the $800,000 snowbird about $497 with no offsetting saving; a landlord about $186 per $300,000 unit, headed for the lease; a $2 million business about $1,243. This route lands mostly on non-residents, investors, businesses, and high-value homes. It is also the route every commissioner will be most reluctant to take, because the TRIM notice will call it what it is.
  2. Raise assessments and fees. Fire, stormwater, solid waste, and permit fees are flat per parcel or per use. They ignore the exemption completely and cost the $280,000 house the same as the $1.5 million house. This is the regressive route, and the quiet one — it never appears as a millage increase.[9]
  3. Ask for a sales surtax. Requires a referendum. Sales taxes take 7.4% of income from Florida's poorest fifth and 1% from its top 1%.[9]
  4. Cut spending. Which spending? The administrator's sample list was libraries, parks, the free Siesta Key trolley, lifeguards ($3,000,000 a year), transit, veterans services.[3] Those are used disproportionately by people who do not own $1.5 million homes. This site's own platform identifies $49.85M to $140.5M a year in overhead, consulting, and capital-plan savings that touch none of them.[11]

One shift is automatic

The voter-approved debt for the Environmentally Sensitive Lands program and the Legacy Trail must be paid regardless. The administrator told the board those millage rates “would have to go up a little bit to cover the debt,” and that “every property owner without a homestead exemption would have to pay a little bit more.”[3] That is the amendment's built-in redistribution, no vote required: fixed obligations spread over a smaller base fall on landlords, businesses, and second homes — and, through rent, on tenants.

So: the working class does not bear the brunt of the cut. It gets the best of the cut, if it owns. It bears the brunt of the recovery only if the county chooses fees, a surtax, or service cuts over efficiency and millage. Renters are the exception on both counts: nothing on the front end, and first in line on the back end for anything that flows through a landlord's bill.

Part five

2028: the year after it passes, by household

The renter in Gulf Gate

Your November tax-season is the same as every year: nothing arrives, because nothing is yours to exempt. Your landlord's assessment can now rise only 5% a year instead of 10%, which he appreciates. If the county backfills with millage, about $15 a month of that shows up in your renewal. If it backfills with a fire or stormwater assessment, that shows up too — those are on his bill and therefore on your lease. If it cuts the bus route you take to work, that is your cost. Your best day is the one where the commission finds the $87,088,073 in overhead instead.

The Live Local tenant off Fruitville

Your rent is pinned to the state's income table, not to your landlord's tax bill — and his bill is already mostly exempt. So the amendment does not move your rent up or down. What it can move is the library branch, the SCAT route, and the human-services budget you actually use. You are the household with the least paper exposure and the most service exposure.

The working couple in a $280,000 North Port ranch

You save $1,078 on the county side and about $753 more on the city side — roughly $1,830 a year, a third of your whole bill. If the county backfills with millage it costs you $19. This amendment was written for you. The only way you come out behind is if the county replaces the money with flat assessments (you pay the same as the waterfront house) or by cutting the services your family uses.

The first-time buyer of a $373,100 condo

You close in 2026, file for homestead by March 1, 2027, and your non-school bill drops by half — $1,078 a year — while your school taxes are unchanged. Miss the March 1 filing and you get nothing that year. If you moved to Florida after December 31, 2026, none of this applies to you for five years: same house, same street, $1,078 more than your neighbor.

The owner of a $1.5 million home west of the Trail

You save the same $1,078 as the North Port couple — about 6% of a $16,800 bill. If the county backfills with millage you pay roughly $777 of it back, netting about $300. If it backfills with fees you pay the same flat charge as everyone else, a rounding error for you. You are the household for whom this amendment changes least — unless the commission takes the local option and raises the exemption further.

The snowbird with an $800,000 Longboat condo

No homestead, no exemption, no saving. Your assessment cap tightens to 5%, which helps in a hot market. Every dollar of debt-service shift and every backfill mill lands on you in full — about $497 a year on the county line alone at the administrator's number, and more if the Town backfills its own $1.4 million. You are the person the amendment most clearly asks to pay.

Part six

The $87 million, checked two ways

$87,088,073

County's own FY2029 loss estimate; $46,851,464 (≈11% of the levy) in FY2028.[3]

$822

That loss divided by the county's 105,884 homesteaded parcels.[4]

$823

The amendment's extra $200,000 exemption × the county's 4.1142 mills (county + EMS). Two independent routes, one dollar apart.

The county's number and the amendment's text reconcile almost exactly, which means neither side is exaggerating the size of the hole. The administrator's proportional illustration — $35,231,306 off the Sheriff, $24,339,796 off county departments, $11,400,000 off EMS — is not a plan; he said so. It is what happens if nobody chooses. The Sheriff alone is 52% of the General Fund at $224,471,941.[3] Somebody will choose.

Part seven

How to watch your local government after November

Nothing in this amendment executes itself. Every consequence for a Sarasota household runs through decisions the County Commission and four city councils will make in public, on a calendar. Here is the calendar.

  1. By March 1, 2027

    File your homestead exemption if you bought in 2026. No filing, no exemption, no saving — the county keeps your $539.[10]

  2. July 2027 · July 2028

    The Property Appraiser certifies the new, smaller taxable roll. Watch the county's 'rolled-back rate' — the millage that would raise the same dollars as last year. Under TRIM law, anything above it is a tax increase, whatever it is called.[2]

  3. August 2027 · August 2028

    Your TRIM notice arrives. Read the bottom half: the non-ad valorem assessments (fire, stormwater, solid waste). A backfill through those lines never shows up as a millage change. Compare each to last year.[3]

  4. September budget hearings

    Two public hearings, by law. This is the room where 'cut the trolley' or 'cut the consultants' gets decided. Ask one question: what is the dollar gap, and what is the ordered list of what goes first? This site's Solutions page is a ready-made list that starts with overhead, not services.[11]

  5. Any utility rate hearing

    Water and sewer rates are set separately and were already scheduled to rise 5% a year through 2028. A general-fund shortfall has a way of becoming an 'administrative transfer' from the utility. Watch for it.[2]

  6. Any surtax referendum

    A sales-surtax ballot question is the most regressive route to the same money. It will be described as 'a penny.' Ask what it replaces.[9]

  7. The Legislature's 2027 session

    The 'core services' clause takes effect only through a statute listing prohibited local expenditures. That bill decides what the clause actually means. Read it when it is filed.[1]

  8. Any 'local option' vote

    The amendment lets the commission raise the homestead exemption further, up to everything. If that comes up, ask the question this page asks: which of the four routes pays for it?[1]

Where we stand

The diagnosis is right. The instrument is blunt. The outcome is local.

This site exists because Sarasota County's spending and debt outran the people paying for it, and because the property-tax escalator let that happen without a single recorded vote for a tax increase. Amendment 3 is Tallahassee's answer to exactly that. It is a real, permanent, working-class tax cut for the two-thirds of Sarasota homesteaders it reaches most, and it is nothing at all for the renters and newcomers it does not reach.

What it is not is the end of property taxes, or the end of the argument. It removes about a quarter of a typical bill and leaves the county holding an $87,088,073 question. If the commission answers it with the overhead, consulting, and capital-plan savings already on the public record, working families win twice. If it answers with fees, a surtax, or the bus and the library, the cut will have been handed to homeowners with one hand and taken back from renters and the modest with the other.

Whichever way you vote, the work starts the next morning, at the dais, in September. Be there. Bring the list.

First-year saving at the $150,000 stage is $539 for a homesteader with at least that much assessed value, unincorporated; the FY2028 county backfill figure is 0.3507 mills. All bills here exclude non-ad valorem assessments, which the amendment does not touch.

Sources & footnotes

  1. [1]CS/HJR 1F (2026 Special Session F), enrolled. Art. VII §§4, 6, 9 and Art. XII, Fla. Const. as proposed. The $150,000 / $250,000 schedule, CPI indexing from 2029, the five-year $50,000 cap for persons without a Florida permanent residence on Dec. 31, 2026, the 5% non-homestead assessment cap, the permissive renter-relief clause ('may'), and the local option to exempt 'up to all remaining assessed valuation' are all in the enrolled text. Florida Senate bill page
  2. [2]Sarasota County FY2026 Budget Reference Guide, p.1: countywide millage 3.3842; EMS 0.7300; total unincorporated millage 11.4737; typical $300,000 bill $3,270; schools 53¢ of every property-tax dollar; FY2023–FY2026 millage, taxable value, and ad valorem revenue table. School and non-school mills are derived from that chart (0.53 × 11.4737 ≈ 6.08; remainder ≈ 5.39). Data & Sources (corpus)
  3. [3]County Administrator Jonathan Lewis, Board of County Commissioners budget workshop, Aug. 21, 2026, as reported by the Sarasota News Leader (Aug. 27, 2026): losses of $46,851,464 (FY2028, ≈11% of the levy) and $87,088,073 (FY2029); backfill millage of 0.3507 and 0.6214; EMS loss ≈$11.4M; General Fund loss ≈$70M; proportional-share illustration for the Sheriff and county departments; ESLPP, Legacy Trail, and Mosquito Control debt millage 'would have to go up'; $350,000 sample bill $3,594.49 → $3,056.62. Sarasota News Leader
  4. [4]Sarasota County Property Appraiser, 2025 roll: 105,884 parcels with homestead exemption (113,544 in 2024) of 304,930 total parcels. sc-pa.com
  5. [5]Florida Revenue Estimating Conference, Financial Impact Statement for HJR 1F: non-school local government revenue reduced ≈$8.78 billion (FY2028-29 cash) rising to ≈$11.86 billion recurring by FY2030-31. EDR constitutional amendments
  6. [6]Town of Longboat Key FY2027 Preliminary Budget Memo (June 15, 2026), p.3: property tax revenue 'could decline by approximately $705,000 in the first year and as much as $1.4 million annually' once fully implemented; ≈76% of Town property tax supports public safety and public works. Data & Sources (corpus)
  7. [7]Adopted FY2026 operating millage: City of North Port 3.7667; City of Venice 3.8450 (plus 0.3405 debt); City of Sarasota 3.2730 (up 0.2730); Town of Longboat Key 1.9600 (2.5543 with debt and beach levies). Voted debt levies are excluded from the city add-on figures. Data & Sources (corpus)
  8. [8]Live Local Act 'missing middle' exemption, §196.1978(3), Fla. Stat.: units for households at or below 120% of area median income receive a 75% (80–120% AMI) or 100% (≤80% AMI) property-tax exemption if rents stay within the Florida Housing Finance Corporation limits. Florida Housing
  9. [9]Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, 'Who Pays?' 7th ed. (2024), Florida: sales and excise taxes take 7.4% of income from the lowest-earning fifth and 1.0% from the top 1%. Any backfill through a sales surtax, flat per-parcel assessments, or utility rates is regressive in the same way. ITEP
  10. [10]Homestead exemption applications are due March 1 of the tax year (§196.011, Fla. Stat.). A buyer who closes in 2026 and does not file by March 1, 2027 receives nothing from the amendment's first year. Property Appraiser — homestead
  11. [11]This site's Citizens Savings & Efficiency Platform identifies $49.85M to $140.5M a year in county savings without a service cut — a range that brackets the county's own $87.1M FY2029 loss. Solutions