SWORN supports abolishing property taxes.

By the passing of the petition, the State Representatives and Senators will be forced to act and reform property taxes.  We The People have the power to abolish property taxes altogether, creating the modern-day Boston Tea Party in the fight against Ohio’s outrageously out of control budget that is dramatically affecting property taxes.

Ohio DOGE is needed to find Waste, Fraud and Abuse

Property taxes are too high, but the solution is not raising other taxes or cutting essential services, like roads, police, fire, or schools.

Find Solutions:

  1. Ohio needs to fix the Broken process on establishing property values.
  2. Property flippers are flooding Ohio and driving up home sales.
  3. Homeowners are being taxed on "unrealized gains".
  4. Utilities & large companies are given tax abatements.

For many years, the state has slashed the local government fund, and the responsibility for schools has been put on taxpayers through property taxes. The state budget has ballooned with waste, fraud, and abuse.

Ohio has three choices:

  1. Do nothing and tax everyone out of their homes
  2. Slash local services
  3. Cut the state budget.

A 100% property tax exemption for seniors would cost less than 3% of Ohio's budget. Eliminating inflation-driven increases in property taxes would cost nothing—it would simply limit future increases.

Potential Obvious Sources of Savings

Aggregating identified opportunities from waste, fraud, and abuse (WFA) reductions, cuts to services for undocumented immigrants, welfare for able-bodied non-workers, and elimination of non-essential spending, potential annual savings could range from $10-20 billion (optimistic estimates, with realistic figures likely lower due to implementation challenges and federal mandates).

Key areas include:

Medicaid and health programs WFA: $3-3.5 billion through audits, AI detection, and provider verification.

  • Welfare and child care WFA:
    • Hundreds of millions via eligibility checks and claim suspensions.
  • Procurement and contracts:
    • $1-2 billion by consolidating services and improving bidding transparency.
  • General operations WFA:
    • $200-500 million via hotlines, audits, and data analytics.
  • Services for undocumented immigrants:
    • $0.5-1.5 billion by restricting non-emergency health, education add-ons, and law enforcement costs (e.g., shifting to federal reimbursements).
  • Welfare for able-bodied adults who choose not to work:
    • $1.5-3 billion through stricter Medicaid, SNAP, and TANF work requirements and disenrollment for non-compliant individuals.
  • Non-essential spending items:
    • Sports stadium subsidies: $500 million.
    • Tax exemptions and corporate incentives: $150-300 million (e.g., data centers, film credits).
    • Earmarks for local projects: $80-100 million (e.g., community centers, quantum computing).
    • Economic development grants: $200-500 million.
    • Non-core higher education/vocational: $100-200 million.
    • Public broadcasting and arts: $10-20 million.
    • Miscellaneous (e.g., tourism, environmental extras, administrative overlaps): $500-1 billion.
    • Broader corporate welfare and government philanthropy: $500-800 million.

These savings could partially offset the $18.26 billion loss, but full replacement would require deeper structural reforms or revenue increases, as total potential falls short without impacting core services.

Necessary Changes to Income and Sales Taxes to Make Up the Difference

Assuming no other offsets and using the provided FY 2021 revenue figures (with current 2026 tax rates for context: state sales tax at 5.75%, state income tax flat at 2.75% on income over $26,050), eliminating $18.26 billion in property tax revenue would require significant increases to income and/or sales taxes. Calculations assume proportional increases on existing tax bases (state sales base ≈ $389 billion; state income base ≈ $368 billion, derived from revenue divided by effective rates).

Options include:

  • Sales Taxes Only:
    • To fully replace the revenue via state sales tax, the rate would need to increase from 5.75% to approximately 10.44% (an additional 4.69 percentage points), generating the extra $18.26 billion. Including local sales (average combined rate currently ~7.3%), this could push average total rates to 12% or higher if locals also adjust, making it more regressive.
  • Income Taxes Only:
    • To cover the gap via state income tax, the flat rate would need to rise from 2.75% to about 4.95% (an increase of 2.2 percentage points, roughly doubling revenue from $10.12 billion to $28.38 billion). This assumes the tax base remains stable; actual impacts could vary with behavioral changes like reduced work or migration.
  • Combined Approach:
    • A balanced split (e.g., half from each) could mean a sales tax increase to ~8.1% (adding 2.35 points) and income tax to ~3.85% (adding 1.1 points), but this would still require legislative changes and could face economic drawbacks like reduced consumer spending or business relocation. Note: Recent data shows state income tax revenue at ~$10.4 billion in FY 2025, suggesting similar scales.

Education needs vs wants

How can the education system be revamped so that cost per student is consistent with other successful states?

  • Compare Ohio to Florida. Ohio spends 97 billion to Florida's 118 billion. Florida has twice the population as Ohio and they are growing as we shrink.
  • Ohio has 611 school districts in Florida has 67, one per county.
  • Ohio has 198 state agencies, boards and commissions while Florida has 61. Many of these function like NGO's, they are private and not subject to FOIA request or other forms of scrutiny.

Important factors to consider in addressing the property tax issue

  • The size and structure of Ohio government should be addressed as a larger issue. Shuffling around tax sources should take a back seat.
  • Our state is structurally bloated and unsound. It cannot be sustained unless they continually take more of our money. We believe there is tremendous waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption in the $97 billion pile of revenue and expenses.
  • Focus should not be on juggling tax sources around. That seems to be the current game plan. Reduction and spending should be the path we focus on.