Getty Images; Tyler Le/BI
You've heard soulful power ballads about love, or loss, or yearning. But have you heard someone croon about… property taxes?
"In a world full of noise, hear the love choir sing/Together in unity, we're reclaiming our wings," the singer croons. "So sign a petition/come join the fight/let's axe the taxes/bring wrongs to the right."
The song, "Uplift the Dream," is one of 20 tracks on an AI-generated album specifically designed to rally support for eliminating Ohio's property taxes. (That's also not including 10 bonus tracks released later.) While a full album devoted to rolling back property taxes may seem extreme, it's rooted in a very real movement: Right now, large swaths of America are gripped by a property tax revolt.
Beyond Ohio's musical pushback, there's breakdancing at New Jersey town meetings in protest of property tax increases, and even rallies in Washington state where attendees can win a raffle to have their property tax paid for. On the federal level, lawmakers like Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene are advocating for the nationwide abolition of property taxes. Even Elon Musk has weighed in, stating that the taxes mean "your house is a de facto lease from the government." On the whole, the pressure seems to be coming from baby boomers, who are both the largest share of home buyers and help make up the largest share of homeowners across the generations.
There's a good reason, on the surface, for some Americans to be taken aback at their taxes. Property values have exploded over the last few years, causing some homeowners' tax bills to grow by hundreds or even thousands of dollars annually. That has led to pushback, from people like Brian Massie, a retired Ohioan whose group generated the anti-property levy album and is leading the effort to axe the tax in his home state.
"When my friend and I were talking about this, we were saying, 'No one cares.' Representatives aren't even willing to talk to us about the problem," Massie says. "Then we're going to have to starve the beast, and that's the expression we use — starving the beast. We said, 'We're going to get a citizens-led initiative to abolish all Ohio property taxes'."
The revolt also comes at a particularly tense moment between generations. On one side are the boomers, who are sitting on properties whose values have skyrocketed but are entering their retirement years, when cash flow starts to become squeezed. On the other hand are millennials and other younger residents, many of whom are priced out of homeownership, but rely on the local services, from schools to fire departments, that property taxes fund. Both have legitimate concerns — but the decision to take aim at one of the simpler tax bills we're stuck with could pop many structures of American daily life in the process.
The role of a property tax
Property taxes are just one part of the life cycle of American taxation. Younger taxpayers pay Social Security taxes out of their incomes, funding the benefits they won't receive for decades. On the other hand, older taxpayers help fund schools and other municipal services they may not use in their daily lives by paying property taxes on their larger and generally more valuable properties. Property taxes are a huge funding source: As of fiscal year 2022, 27.4% of local and state tax collections came from property taxes, per an analysis by the Tax Foundation, making it the largest single source of tax revenue.
"Replacing the property tax is virtually impossible in most states, at least without avoiding substantial economic harm," Jared Walczak, the vice president of state projects at the Tax Foundation, says. "Property taxes generate about 70% of all local tax revenue nationwide. In many states, it's 80% or 90%, or even higher."
Property taxes are also, unlike a lot of other aspects of the American tax system, pretty simple. Kyle Pomerleau, a senior fellow studying federal tax policy at the American Enterprise Institute, tells me that property taxes are relatively high on the list of simple and efficient taxes. Rather than rely on some wild calculation or complicated brackets, property taxes are assessed as a percentage of the value of the land and the buildings on it, so there are a lot fewer ways to dodge the tax.
Of course, property taxes can have their flaws — something many aggrieved homeowners are experiencing firsthand. Owners have constrained direct control over the value of their property. Sure, you could make a major renovation or build an entirely new building on the lot, but the price of real estate in a given area is subject to larger factors like zoning laws, migration trends, and interest rates. When home values skyrocket, as they have over the last few years, property taxes soar with them. Home values have increased by an inflation-adjusted nearly 27% since 2020, according to a Tax Foundation analysis, and that's dragging property taxes up with them.
"If your property value has gone up by 50% and your rate hasn't changed, you're paying 50% more in nominal terms," Walczak says. In inflation-adjusted terms, that's over 25% more in taxes. "You're probably upset, and you're probably calling your legislators, and they are clamoring for solutions. And that doesn't always yield good policy, but there are valid reasons for the current consternation."
There are, of course, benefits to having the value of your property go up. Your net worth is higher, and you have more borrowing power. If and when you sell your property, you'll make a good profit. But that net worth is pretty illiquid. You may have that home equity and wealth, but you can't redeem that at the supermarket.
As Pomerleau tells me, part of the pushback might just be because of how visible these taxes are: Income taxes are withheld from your paycheck, and other taxes might only make their appearances when you wrangle all your documents in April. But with property taxes, you're paying it through your mortgage or actually sending a check to your local government.
"You internalize the tax burden," Pomerleau says. "And that internalization, I think, can cause people to be like, wow, it really costs this much."
A sudden increase in the size of the check that you're writing to the government can feel especially disconcerting when the home around you isn't materially changing. Structures themselves tend to decrease in value over time — it's the land that's appreciating in value. So, homeowners are sitting in their same homes, with their creaky floors and occasional leaky faucets, and being told that they have to pay up because it's 20% more valuable. Those changes can feel abstract, Rita Jefferson, a local analyst at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, tells me.
"We really do have to deal with the affordability problem of housing in this country at a very basic level in order to get a handle on property taxes. But the way to do that is not to cut property taxes," Jefferson says.
A generational divide
Motivated Americans have previously gone to war over property taxes, but this iteration of the battle has a distinct generational flavor — and more extreme demands. In the 1970s, Walczak said, a combination of skyrocketing home values and localities pocketing extra cash led to some tweaks around the country. In California, for instance, Proposition 13 froze property tax collections at 1% and capped assessments, which are the government's estimates of property value for tax purposes, at 2% annually until a property is sold. The rules helped freeze some homeowners in place — the assessed value of many long-held homes is well below the actual market value of the property, so those who bought in that era are paying a lot less in tax than their more recently moved-in neighbors.
That tweak may also have contributed to some of the circumstances fueling today's revolt. While it's not entirely the intention, Jefferson says that property taxes often act as a built-in incentive or gentle nudge for folks sitting on properties increasing in value. If you're an older person in a four-bedroom house, paying property taxes on that larger property, you might take that moment to realize it's time to downsize. When you downsize, that opens another housing option for a cash-strapped millennial. In California, research suggests younger workers have had to put off the transition from being renters to homeowners, as older people are unwilling to give up their preferential rates. It's not just California: Across the country, older homeowners are staying put, with 40% of them remaining in their homes for 20 years or more. This has helped push up the median age of a first-time homebuyer to a record 38 years old. That leads to generational resentment, as younger would-be homebuyers feel boxed out by intransigent boomers, while the older generation feels like millennials and Gen Xers are the beneficiaries of those tax checks they're mailing into town hall.
"When you have predominantly older people paying the vast majority of your home property taxes, what ends up happening is that they become increasingly resentful of the fact that they're paying for school districts. They're paying for all these things that they say they don't use," Jefferson says.
She adds that eliminating the property tax outright is "shortsighted." It's, in essence, addressing the symptoms rather than the root. After all, one of the reasons that home values have skyrocketed is that there isn't enough affordable, available housing for everyone.
Massie, the retired Ohioan trying to wholesale abolish property taxes, says he feels bad for younger generations as they contend with both higher home prices and ballooning college loans. But he doesn't understand why he's on the hook to pay for someone else's education. He also chafes at the idea that older people should move out of their homes if they can't afford their property taxes.
"I've been in this house 20 years, and I've paid over a hundred thousand dollars for local education," Massie says. "I've never sent a child. I've never benefited from the services at all. Do I have to go bankrupt? Is that what everybody wants, or is that enough?"
Some areas have already started to offer some relief to homeowners. In Indiana, for instance, a newly passed bill lets homeowners take a 10% property tax credit off what they owe. But this comes with its own problems: Lawmakers in the state have argued that the reductions will force the state to rely more heavily on income taxes and shrink the available revenue for public services.
"My area, Fort Wayne Community Schools, is looking at, I believe, around a $10 million hit for their budget coming up in 2026," Indiana House Minority Leader Phil GiaQuinta, a Democrat representing Fort Wayne, tells me. "And so they're going to have to figure out ways to probably have to borrow, but who knows what, but they're going to have to figure out ways to fund the school system. But we're talking about basic needs, like a new roof."
A wholesale cut would cause even more problems, Jefferson says, since it also lets people who can afford to pay property taxes off the hook. It will also lead to what Pomerleau says is a reduced cycle of wealth transfers — older taxpayers will no longer fund the resources that younger households rely on. As he puts it, "you and I work and earn wages today to pay for current benefits for the same seniors that don't like paying property taxes."
That's an argument that resonates with Cameron Mulvey, a 27-year-old entrepreneur in Massachusetts. If you'd asked him five or six years ago, he might have been more open to a property tax repeal. But in the current economy — and with perhaps a less naive worldview, he says — it's a much harder sell.
"If you look across the broader scope of the economy, there are so many advantages to boomers and so many headwinds working against people in their 20s," Mulvey says.
As Mulvey notes he's not receiving Social Security benefits, but his taxes are still paying for it. Ideally, he said, entitlement pools like that of Social Security grow, so that you can take out more than you paid in. But, if he died at the age of 60, he might not ever see a penny of his payments — even though he paid into it.
"Just because you're not using the benefits that your tax pays for — in this case, schools — that's how taxes work. That's how taxes are supposed to work," Mulvey says. "So I think it's just a little bit of a frankly delusional argument that just because they're not using the benefits, they shouldn't have to pay the tax.".
Massie, the anti-property tax Ohioan who draws from Social Security, counters that Social Security funds are drawn from a federal tax, and the monthly benefits are "not making anybody rich." He says that some public pensioners likely receive more than he does from his Social Security.
"Why would I have to pay more or less than my neighbor for police and fire and roads based on the valuation of my property? What does the valuation of my property have to do with how much I should be paying for my police and roads?" Massie said.
Regardless of the resentment, all the tax aficionados agreed that a wholesale elimination of property taxes is just not fiscally sustainable for the larger infrastructure ecosystem. That doesn't mean that the situation has to fester, though — there are ways to reform it, but none that are likely as simple or as appealing as just nixing the tax entirely.
Walczak says that one potential solution is imposing levy limits, which limit the amount of revenue that a locality can generate from existing properties. The important distinction is that it's a limit on overall collections, rather than a parcel-by-parcel cap — that type of tweak leads to situations like the one in California, where property tax burdens both hinder housing availability and place a greater property tax burden on new homebuyers. Other options, according to Jefferson, could be what's called property tax circuit breakers — circuits that get "tripped" when property tax bills consist of a certain percentage of workers' incomes, or when homeowners are below certain income thresholds. It may increase the complexity of the system, but it would also alleviate some of the concerns about tax burdens on older people who no longer have paychecks coming in.
"They sound complicated. They're not straightforward. They're not merely as straightforward as cutting property taxes," Jefferson says. "But these are the kinds of things that will actually make sure that the people who genuinely cannot afford paying property taxes are the ones who are being supported."
It's unclear how successful these pushes will be. The argument, however, comes at a time when Americans' distrust of one another is on the rise, especially among younger people. If boomers successfully argue away a tax that will only impact them for a few years, it may be because it appeals to Americans who already feel like their social contract has broken.
"I think it's incredibly shortsighted because we all benefit from living in a society in which there's a basic level of provision of goods for everybody regardless," Seth Coltar, an Oregon-based historian, tells me. "It feels like it's part of this generalized sense of a radically individualistic and antisocial attitude towards other people."
And the pushback — and any tweaks that come with it — could create unpleasant, subtle cracks that only surface years later.
"For an entire class of people who already own their homes to stand up and say no is, to me, just totally unreasonable," Jefferson says. "It is, to me, a total dereliction of civic duty to your fellow taxpayers, to the people who live in your community, to the people who use all these other public services that are not just for the benefit of you, the homeowner, who can stand up and say, no."
