Abolish Property Taxes, End Feudalism
If you must pay the state to stay on your own land, you don’t own it—you rent it. Now Ron DeSantis is doing something about it. He's not alone.
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NOTE: Yesterday, Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) called a special session, beginning next week, to abolish Florida’s property tax on primary residences. The proposal would immediately exempt 92 percent of Florida homeowners, with full elimination phased-in over time.
You can read the Governor’s annoucement here. It’s good to live in the Free State of Florida, believe me.
Property tax makes you a renter. A serf, really. It means that an 80 year old widow who paid off her house 25 years ago can be evicted at any time by the state if she misses a single payment. It’s immoral.
It’s also ending. Florida Republicans aren’t the only ones taking up the cause. But as is so often the case, they’re leading. — RDM
by Craig Bergman
May 28, 2025
If you must pay the state to stay on your own land, you don’t own it — you rent it. That simple truth is finally breaking through the noise. Across the country, a new courage is rising from governors’ mansions, statehouses, and kitchen tables. Florida is about to end the property-tax trap. Texas is moving more slowly toward zero. Ohio’s citizens are organizing for abolition, which could come as early as November. Indiana is rethinking the lien that never dies.
This feels less like a policy tweak and more like a restoration, a finishing of the American Revolution at the local level: no income tax, no property tax — fund what government must do with transparent sales taxes, trade duties, and tariffs.
I don’t speak here in theories.
Nine states already live without an income tax: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wyoming, and New Hampshire. Look where the economic gravity sits — Texas, Florida, Washington — among the largest, most dynamic state economies in America. No wonder seven more states are actively considering joining them.
People vote with their feet, their families, and their capital, and they consistently choose places that respect their liberties. The lesson is not complicated: prosperity follows liberty, and liberty begins with the state taking its hand out of your pocket before you get home from work.
The next step is to take its hand off your deed.
Property tax is a soft phrase for a hard reality. It is perpetual tribute attached to your address. It does not care if you lose a job or bury a spouse; the bill arrives because you dared to live under a roof. Miss the payment and the government’s claim precedes your own. That is not ownership; it is occupancy by sufferance. A free people should not fear a letter from the county treasurer more than a thunderstorm.
There is a simpler, cleaner way to fund local services without placing a rent meter on homeownership. Pay when you buy — then you own it. At the closing table, a visible, one-time sales tax is collected and recorded on the statement. When the keys hit your palm, the tax is done.
The Courts have taken liberties with the Constitution for far too long. Take 30 seconds to listen to my friend Mark Meckler on how an Article V convention could close the loopholes. Learn more here.
No annual levy. No reassessment because you built a nursery or added a garden shed. Your sweat and stewardship are yours, not a signal to raise tribute. And when you pass that home to your children or your spouse, the law ought to treat it as what it is — love and legacy — not a taxable event.
Be Honest About Taxation
Shifting to this model is not an act of austerity; it is an act of honesty. Sales taxes, retail and broad-based, are transparent. You see them at the register. You choose when to pay by choosing when to buy. They capture everyone who participates in the marketplace — residents, tourists, businesses, even illegals — without interrogating your private papers or threatening your living room.
Add in trade duties and tariffs, as Trump has been proving again and again, that align with the nation’s founding framework, and you have a system that funds the public square without trespassing into the private home.
Some will ask: what of schools, safety, roads? The answer is as ordinary as a paycheck stub and as sturdy as a county fairground. Dedicate a clear share of statewide sales revenue to students and public safety, backed by voter-approved local options with hard caps and sunset clauses. Use state budget surpluses to buy down old levies on a glide path to zero.
Put every proposed rate change in plain English on a ballot that citizens can read without a lawyer. When taxpayers actually see the price of what they buy, trust rises, waste falls, and compliance becomes less a threat and more a habit.
We have a Bill of Rights for a reason.
There is a constitutional and moral arc to this. The Bill of Rights does not read like a set of suggestions; it reads like a fence line — “No farther.” The Fourth Amendment secures our houses, papers, and effects. Compelled annual confession of one’s finances under an income tax, and perpetual valuation and seizure threat under a property tax, cut against that security.
The Fifth guards due process and the dignity of the individual against compelled self-incrimination. The Ninth and Tenth remind lawmakers that not every power the state can imagine is a power it may take. Indirect taxes — consumption and duties — were the constitutional default for a reason: they fund the necessary without invading the intimate.
Obey the Word of God
Scripture points in the same direction. Leviticus’ Jubilee returns land to families; it assumes that the natural state of a nation under God is stewardship, not servitude. Proverbs blesses the man who leaves an inheritance to his children’s children; it does not counsel rulers to nibble away their inheritance.
When Samuel warns Israel about kings who will “take” fields and harvests and sons, it is not a verse about monarchy alone; it is a picture of government that forgets its place. And the commandment against stealing is not suspended by letterhead. A civil order worthy of the people will fund itself honestly and openly, not by fastening a permanent claim on the hearth.
We are often told that complexity is the price of modern life — that a tax code must sprawl, that ownership must come with conditions, that liberty must be negotiated with forms in triplicate. But the best reforms are the ones a child can explain.
Own it. Really.
You work; your paycheck is yours. You buy a home; you pay the sales tax once and then you own it. You build a life; the government does not penalize your care or your craft, and it does not tax your grief when you pass your home to those you love. You participate in the marketplace; you see the tax plainly when you choose to make a purchase.
Florida isn’t waiting for Washington to rediscover common sense or moral decency. They’re practicing it. They are telling their citizens: we trust you to live, to build, to raise families, to trade, to give, to save — and to pay for public goods in a way that is as visible as a receipt and as constitutional as a town square.
This is our moment to end the feudal system. We need voices willing to lead like DeSantis: Shall your home be yours? Replace the annual lien with a one-time, closing-table sales tax. Protect owner-occupied improvements from being treated as taxable “events.” Treat inheritance as what it is — an act of love, not an opportunity for confiscation. Abolish the income tax where it lingers. Fund the necessary with sales taxes, trade, and tariffs that everyone can see and understand.
A nation and a state that believes in property must let its people truly own it. A people who believe in liberty must not be made to purchase it anew every year. We can write a better story on our deeds and in our laws — one where the government serves without snooping, where the citizen pays without fear, and where a family’s roof is not a ledger line but a blessing.
End the property tax. Let free families own free homes in a free nation.
— Craig Bergman is a nationally syndicated radio host, political consultant, and technology entrepreneur from Des Moines, Iowa.
On top is the valuation scam. Unearned income taxation that is immoral and unethical.
And Texas just keeps on gaslighting us, pay attention Abbott.