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An amendment to abolish Ohio property taxes won’t be on the fall ballot

Posted on: Friday, June 5, 2026

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (Statehouse News Bureau) — An amendment to abolish property taxes in Ohio won’t be on the fall ballot. The leader of the group of volunteers circulating petitions said they don’t have the 620,000 signatures they wanted and won’t submit for this fall’s ballot.

Brian Massie of the Committee to Abolish Ohio Property Taxes or Ax Ohio Tax said the group will continue circulating petitions to try for November 2027. He wouldn’t say how many signatures volunteers have gathered, which has been his approach since the petition drive was launched last May.

They were facing a deadline of July 1 to submit 413,487 valid signatures from half of Ohio’s counties. If they submitted signatures and fell short of that number, they’d have 10 days to gather more and try again. But if they failed, they couldn’t resubmit those signatures later.

“There is another reason that we have decided to carry over until next year, of which we are legally allowed to carry these signatures over,” Massie said in an announcement livestreamed on several conservative-leaning platforms. “As responsible citizens, we want to provide our elected officials with enough time to address the needed spending cuts to the bloated taxing authorities throughout Ohio and the spending priorities of the state legislators. We do not have a problem generating revenue in the state. We have a spending and a fraud, waste and abuse problem.”

He acknowledged that state lawmakers have passed legislation that would lower property taxes through to cap spikes on increases in levies along with a state-paid owner occupied tax credit, to change the formula by which a school district’s guaranteed minimum tax rate is calculated and to allow county budget commissions to reduce millage of property tax levies. But he added that the people he’s talked to “want significant tax reductions in property taxes now, rather than reduction of future increases.”

Republicans said that would bring more than $2 billion in tax relief, but admitted taxpayers’ bills wouldn’t be slashed. Democrats were mixed in their support.

If the group does eventually make the ballot, they’ll face a massive, expensive and well-coordinated opposition. In April more than 65 groups of local elected officials, libraries, businesses and trade groups, and unions representing first responders and teachers created a coalition to send the message that abolishing property taxes would be eliminate $24 billion dollars in money that local voters have approved, and it would be catastrophic to schools, law enforcement and other local services.