Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday he is calling the Florida Legislature into special session during the week of June 1 to consider a constitutional amendment aimed at broad property tax relief for homeowners. The plan, he said in Tampa, would eliminate taxes on homesteads.
DeSantis is pitching the proposal, titled Save Our Homes from Excessive Property Taxes, as an immediate boost to the homestead exemption with a schedule that would eventually phase out the levy through general law. If lawmakers advance it, the next stop would be a ballot measure for Florida voters this fall, putting the question directly before homeowners in a state where property taxes have become a major political target.
The timing matters because the governor is not asking lawmakers to study the issue in the abstract. He is setting a date and forcing a decision. Property tax revenue collected by local governments has nearly doubled in the past seven years, rising from $32 billion to $60 billion, and it is expected to reach $83 billion by 2032. That is the backdrop to DeSantis’ pitch: a state that has seen growing tax collections and a governor insisting that homeowners need relief now.
That contrast also exposes the hardest part of the plan. Eliminating homestead taxes would reduce a major source of local government revenue at a time when those collections are already climbing, and the proposal does not spell out in the facts provided how the lost money would be replaced. The headline promise is simple; the fiscal tradeoff is not. DeSantis said the state should “stand up for taxpayers” and “save the home of every Floridian,” but the Legislature will have to decide whether that argument is enough to send a constitutional amendment to voters this fall.
The special session gives the proposal an immediate path, but not a guarantee. Lawmakers will now take up the amendment during the week of June 1, and only then will Florida know whether the governor’s property tax push moves from a campaign-style announcement in Tampa to a statewide vote.
