Michael Stinzianois Franklin County auditor.
Property tax bills are here.
Many have questions, and some don’t like what they see.
It’s important to understand why your property tax may have gone up, stayed the same, or gone down.
While property values did rise to historic levels across the County, it is not a property value problem that drives a large tax increase, but rather how, under Ohio law, taxes are impacted by voter-approved levies from this past November’s election.
Property values across Franklin County rose on average approximately 40% following the 2023 mass reappraisal; property taxes did not rise at a corresponding ratio.
For residential and agricultural properties, the average pre-levy property tax increase based on the new values from the reappraisal was only 6.12%, which would be a $279 increase over the year.
Post-election, when voters approved levies for schools and libraries and other entities, those levies added an additional 6% of taxes across Franklin County.
Countywide, this translated on average to approximately an additional 12% in property tax, equating to a total increase of $546 for the average homeowner.
Michael Stinziano:The problem is not how your property is valued. There's a more expensive issue
Again, the average residential property in Franklin County (which is $259,378 in 2023) would have seen a pre-levy tax increase of $279.
But once voters approved those levies, the tax increase amount doubled.
How will property taxes change in Columbus and Dublin?
In the City of Columbus, this impact is even more stark.
The average Columbus residential property (calculated at $192,238 in 2023) pre-levy would have a change in property tax of $239.21, an increase of about 9%.
Post levy, the changes added an additional $417.40 to that amount, leading to a grand total of $656.61 of increase in property taxes, which equates to approximately 25%.
Another community that had a levy on the ballot, the City of Dublin, also illustrates the power of a levy on property taxes under current Ohio law. In Dublin, the average value of a home increased 25.1% from $284,768 in 2022 to $356,288 in 2023.
The average change in taxes due to the reappraisal was approximately two dollars. However, Dublin voters approved a levy on the November ballot that added an additional $1,000 to the average homeowner’s property tax bill.
Some of the challenge of Ohio’s property tax problem goes back to how we in the state of Ohio fund our schools, overly relying on property taxes, which is a funding method that was deemed unconstitutional decades ago by the Ohio Supreme Court. Despite that decision (the DeRolph decision), the legislature has yet to adequately reform how we fund our schools.
Solutions must be found to address taxes
Central Ohio is booming, and at the same time a perfect storm of factors has gathered to cause a historic rise in property values. The need to find a way to accommodate these changes while still ensuring taxes are affordable for our homeowners remains a priority.
In short, the state of Ohio needs a comprehensive review of our property tax system.
Let’s find a constitutional way to fund our schools, as the Supreme Court has already ordered. Pass legislation to cap property tax increases.
Modernize the Homestead Exemption by raising the income qualification and exempting more of a home’s value. Fix the LLC loophole so all properties can be properly valued. Only then can we solve the perennial property tax increase conundrum.
Protecting homeowners from onerous property tax increases can be accomplished. Ohio’s leaders just need the will to do it.
Michael Stinzianois Franklin County auditor.
