How Other States Have Tried This
Six states, six different approaches to property tax relief
The six states below took very different approaches — some attempted full repeal, most didn't. They're presented here as comparative evidence for understanding what's been tried and why it succeeded or failed, not as a menu of acceptable outcomes. The Coalition's own position is full elimination in Kansas; see About This Educational Guide.
North Dakota — Two Failed Repeal Votes, Then a Funded Alternative
What was proposed: North Dakota is the only state where a full property tax repeal has actually reached statewide voters — twice. A 2012 constitutional amendment would have abolished all property taxes; a similar 2024 measure (Initiated Measure 4) followed the same basic model.
What happened: Both failed by wide margins — 76.5% to 23.5% in 2012, and 63.3% to 36.7% in 2024. Neither amendment specified a replacement funding source; both would have required the legislature to figure that out after passage. In both cases, opposition came from a broad, cross-ideological coalition — school boards, city and county associations, chambers of commerce, and fire and law-enforcement associations — united specifically around the absence of a funding plan, not opposition to tax relief in general.
Revenue at stake: roughly $812 million/year in 2012; an estimated $1.3–3.15 billion per two-year budget cycle in 2024.
What North Dakota did instead: after the 2024 defeat, the legislature and governor built a funded, incremental model rather than abandoning relief entirely — a permanent revenue stream from earnings on the state's Legacy Fund (built from oil and gas tax revenue, not a tax increase) now funds a primary-residence tax credit ($1,550/year in 2025–27, targeted to reach $2,000/year by 2027–29), paired with a 3% cap on local budget growth. Officials describe the goal as putting most primary residences "on a path to zero" property tax over roughly a decade.
Arguments for repeal (as made by proponents): eliminates the risk of losing a paid-off home over an annual tax; removes a tax disconnected from ability to pay.
Arguments against (as made by opponents): no credible replacement revenue was specified; local services (schools, fire, police) rely on this funding.
What Kansas can learn: a repeal amendment without a named, sized replacement mechanism has failed by a wide margin every time it's been tried.
Texas — An Official Estimate of What Full Elimination Would Cost
What was proposed: Texas has never put full property tax repeal to a statewide vote, but has debated it, and its 2023–2026 legislative sessions produced the most detailed public accounting anywhere of what full repeal would cost — because the state's own comptroller was asked to run the numbers directly.
What happened: the comptroller's office reported that fully replacing the $81 billion the state collected in property tax in 2023 would require raising the state sales tax from 6.25% to roughly 22% (see The Replacement Revenue Math) — a figure one state senator characterized as showing "there's no way to eliminate them" through sales tax alone. Texas pursued incremental relief instead: in 2023 and 2025, it used a large budget surplus to raise the homestead exemption ($40,000 → $100,000 → $140,000, $150,000 for seniors) and directly buy down ("compress") local school district tax rates.
Revenue at stake: $81 billion/year statewide (2023), roughly half from school districts.
Effect so far: the average Texas homeowner's bill fell an estimated 28% from 2023 to 2024, with further cuts following in 2025.
Arguments for full elimination: Texas already has no state income tax, so proponents argue the state's tax structure is already oriented away from income-based taxation.
Arguments against: the comptroller's own estimate suggests the sales tax rate required would be politically and economically difficult; the exemption/compression approach depended on an unusually large, temporary budget surplus that has since diminished.
What Kansas can learn: an official fiscal estimate — not an advocacy estimate — put a real number on what full elimination requires, and that number was large enough to redirect the state toward incremental relief instead.
Wyoming — A Named Replacement Mechanism Still Wasn't Enough
What was proposed: Wyoming voters approved a 2024 constitutional amendment giving the legislature new flexibility to tax owner-occupied homes differently from other property — a structural change, not a tax cut by itself. In 2026, a legislative committee then considered a plan to eliminate property tax entirely, paired with a companion bill to raise the state sales tax as a backfill.
What happened: the 2024 amendment passed and has since been used for smaller measures (a 4% annual increase cap, expanded exemptions). The 2026 full-elimination plan — which, unlike North Dakota's, did name a replacement mechanism — was rejected at the committee level, partly because data showed most homeowners hadn't even used the relief programs already enacted.
Arguments for: the sales tax backfill was a specific, named mechanism, addressing the exact objection that sank North Dakota's amendments.
Arguments against: concerns about the sales tax backfill's own effects, and skepticism given low uptake of existing relief programs.
What Kansas can learn: naming a replacement mechanism is necessary but not sufficient — a proposal still has to survive ordinary legislative politics and public awareness of existing relief, and structural amendments (like Wyoming's 2024 vote) and full repeal appear to be separate fights, won or lost on different timelines.
Pennsylvania — Eliminating One Category, Not the Whole Tax
What was proposed: companion bills (House Bill 1649 / Senate Bill 962) propose eliminating school property tax specifically — typically the largest single component of a homeowner's bill — replacing it with a personal income tax increase of 1.88 percentage points and a sales tax increase of 2 percentage points.
What happened: these bills remain under consideration; Pennsylvania already runs an ongoing homestead/farmstead exclusion program funded by gaming revenue, which reduces (but doesn't eliminate) the taxable value of owner-occupied homes.
Arguments for: splitting the replacement across two tax types, rather than loading it onto one, is a notable design choice aimed at reducing the impact on any single group.
Arguments against: it only addresses the school-tax portion, leaving county and municipal property tax untouched; both income and sales tax increases draw their own distributional objections.
What Kansas can learn: targeting one specific, well-defined piece of property tax — rather than the whole system — is a recurring pattern among proposals that have advanced furthest.
Florida — A Multi-Year Phase-In, Not Immediate Repeal
What was proposed: a 2026 ballot measure (following legislative approval by the required three-fifths vote) would substantially raise the homestead exemption in stages — to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028 — with a stated multi-year goal of eliminating non-school property tax on primary residences.
What happened: the proposal has been amended repeatedly, in part due to concerns from local governments and public-safety agencies about revenue loss (estimated at $4.6–8.4 billion/year for non-school local governments), and current versions include a "glide path" of six or more years rather than immediate repeal.
Arguments for: a phased approach lets local governments plan for reduced revenue rather than facing an immediate cliff.
Arguments against: it only reaches non-school, homesteaded property — renters, businesses, and school levies are unaffected; the multi-billion-dollar local revenue loss is a real, unresolved concern.
What Kansas can learn: even a phased, exemption-based approach with years of lead time draws sustained local-government opposition over revenue loss.
California — Restructuring Valuation Instead of Eliminating the Tax
What was proposed: Proposition 13 (1978) didn't repeal property tax or create an exemption — it changed how property gets valued, capping the rate at 1% and moving from annual market-value reassessment to "acquisition value" (reassessed only when a property is sold; capped at 2%/year growth between sales).
What happened: it passed with nearly two-thirds voter approval and remains in effect today, alongside a two-thirds legislative vote requirement to raise state tax rates and two-thirds voter approval for new local special taxes.
Arguments for: keeps property tax bills predictable for long-time owners, protecting them from being taxed out of homes they've owned for decades.
Arguments against: economists have documented a "lock-in effect" — because a home's tax bill jumps sharply upon sale, long-time owners have a strong incentive never to sell, and a new buyer of an identical house next door can end up paying several times more property tax than a 30-year neighbor for the same city services.
What Kansas can learn: California is the clearest example of a state that changed how value is measured rather than eliminating the tax or the revenue it raises — a genuinely different model from anything else on this page, with its own well-documented tradeoff.
Coalition analysis: based on the six examples above, proposals that named a specific, credible replacement revenue source before asking voters or legislators to act made more legislative progress, or were enacted in some form, than proposals that deferred that question to "the legislature will figure it out later" — which have failed at the ballot box every time they've been tried, most dramatically in North Dakota, twice. Wyoming's 2026 experience complicates that pattern somewhat: a named replacement mechanism still wasn't enough on its own. We read that as showing a named mechanism is necessary but not sufficient — not as evidence against the value of having one.
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This guide reflects publicly available legislative and government records as of September 2026. Bill status, vote counts, and program details should be verified against current session records before republishing or citing specific figures. See Sources for citations.