Five property tax bills signed in December reach every association household
Five property tax bills signed in December reach every association household
2026-09-15 · Ohio · Legislation
On December 19, 2025 the Governor signed a five-bill property tax package that the legislature's own announcement claims will deliver “more than $3 billion” in savings. Its two largest components arrive on different dates, and one of them has already started.1
The five acts are HB 124, HB 129, HB 186, HB 309 and HB 335. Each does something different, and the differences matter to a household deciding whether its own bill will move.
What each bill does
HB 186 is the largest. It creates an inflation cap credit for owners in school districts sitting at the 20-mill floor, and at the 2-mill floor for joint vocational school districts, reported at roughly $1.7 billion over three years. It also expands the owner-occupancy credit, reported at about $800 million. The two pieces start at different times: relief under the inflation cap begins June 2026, and the owner-occupancy credit expansion begins January 2027.
HB 129 changes which levies count toward the 20-mill floor, bringing emergency, substitute, incremental growth and conversion levies inside it. The reported effect is to lift 237 districts off the floor over four years — which is how the HB 186 credit is paid for, in the sense that a district off the floor behaves differently under Ohio's reduction factors.
HB 335 caps increases in inside millage to the rate of inflation during reappraisal and update cycles. Inside millage is the unvoted portion of the rate, and it is the part that rises automatically with valuation.
HB 309 expands county budget commission authority to reduce excessive millage.
HB 124 gives county auditors greater oversight of the sales data used in valuation.
The one-time payment already in the system
Separately, a one-time homestead relief measure passed before the summer recess. Representative Brian Stewart described its size: “Each homestead recipient will receive somewhere in the neighborhood of between $250 and $475 as a reduction on their January tax bill coming up at the end of this year.”
Representative Bride Rose Sweeney put the limit on it plainly: “For those people who will receive it, this is going to be incredibly helpful. But next year, because this money is one-time, they will still be in the same position.”
None of this touches what an association may levy. Our Ohio assessment limits page covers that separate question.
Why the package lands unevenly inside a single association
The two biggest credits are owner-occupancy credits. The expanded owner-occupancy credit reaches owners who live in the home. The HB 186 inflation cap reaches owners in districts at the 20-mill floor. Neither is a property-wide reduction, and neither reaches an investor-owned unit.
In a condominium or planned community with meaningful rental penetration — and in Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati that is common — this produces two classes of owner inside one association, paying different effective rates on materially identical units, starting in January 2027. That is not a legal problem for the board. It is a political one, and it will show up in how owners react to an assessment increase adopted in the same budget cycle. Our Ohio budget approval page covers the process side of that conversation.
Where the 20-mill floor actually bites
The 20-mill floor is the mechanism most Ohio owners have never heard of and most feel. Below that floor, Ohio's reduction factors stop protecting a taxpayer from valuation growth, and a reappraisal flows through to the bill close to dollar for dollar. Above it, the reduction factors hold the district's revenue roughly constant and the bill moves much less.
That is why HB 186's credit is targeted at floor districts, and why HB 129's reclassification of levy types is the companion piece: moving a district off the floor changes the arithmetic for every parcel in it. For a board forecasting 2027 delinquency, the question is not the countywide reappraisal percentage — it is whether the school district your community sits in is at the floor. Two associations three miles apart can be in different districts and see completely different January bills off the same reappraisal.
What this does and does not settle
It does not cap valuation growth. HB 335 caps inside millage increases to inflation during reappraisal cycles; it does not cap the taxable value. That is what the constitutional amendments now circulating in the legislature would do, and none of them has passed.
It is not the abolition amendment. The citizen initiative to abolish Ohio property taxes is not on the November 2026 ballot; it was abandoned for 2026 in June and is aimed at November 2027. Anything an owner reads about Ohio “voting on property taxes this fall” is wrong.
It arrives in the same months as the reappraisals. In Butler, Summit, Montgomery and Greene, an 18 to 19 percent valuation increase and an expanded owner-occupancy credit land on the same January 2027 bill. Which one dominates depends on the district, the levy mix and whether the owner occupies. A prediction in either direction outruns the facts, because both outcomes are genuinely available on them.
What to put in the 2027 budget
Widen the delinquency assumption rather than moving it. Boards that normally budget bad debt at a fixed percentage of assessments should carry a range for 2027 and revisit it in February, once January bills have actually landed and the arrears report shows what happened. That is a cheaper adjustment than a mid-year special assessment.
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