IPTI | Property Tax in the News – February 2026

PROPERTY TAX IN THE NEWS – FEBRUARY 2026

IPTI’s usual monthly newsletter – the “President’s Message” – contains, inter alia, some summarised news articles from around the world. This IPTI publication – “Property Tax in the News” – contains some of the more interesting news articles concerning property taxes in North America and Europe which is where many of our members have a particular interest. Links to these and more, similarly summarised, articles – from North America, Europe and around the globe – can be found in “IPTI Xtracts” on our website: www.ipti.org. Please note that these are news articles; they do not necessarily reflect IPTI’s views.

USA

New York: A “simple” real property tax appeal for a house went to New York’s highest appellate court

Real property tax assessment litigation in New York State [tax appeal, tax certiorari] is a nuanced and complex process that must comport with the requirements of state statute, court rules and case law precedent. Consequently, the state legislature took pity on homeowners by creating a residential tax appeal forum known as Small Claims Assessment Review [small claims]. The stated justification for small claims was to provide a simple and inexpensive tax appeal alternative for homeowners to avoid the burden of a formal tax certiorari proceeding. Despite the presumed simplicity of house cases, residential tax appeals should not be underestimated.

Case in point is a tax appeal filed by my firm via small claims for the owner of a house containing the owner’s small professional office used for the practice of psychiatry on an occasional basis as an accommodation to clients.

At the small claims hearing the municipality’s representative did not dispute our evidence of overvaluation, but instead argued that the owner’s professional office disqualified the house from small claims review because the house was not used “exclusively” for residential purposes as stated in the statute. We contended that “exclusively” had already been liberally construed in related statutes to mean “primarily” or “principally”, that the home owner’s office was an accessory residential use under the municipality’s own zoning code, and that it was the intent of the legislature to disqualify mixed-use commercial/residential properties, not a home like the subject property, from small claims. The hearing officer determined that the house did in fact qualify for small claims, and also granted a reduction of the real property tax assessment.

The municipality appealed the hearing officer’s decision on the sole issue of whether a residence containing a professional office of the owner-occupant can avail themself of the small claims forum.

The lower court ruled in favor of the municipality holding that the “exclusively” residential language “must be read to shut out premises having any other uses from the ambit of the [small claims] statute”. The intermediate appellate court affirmed the lower court’s decision.

We were granted leave to appeal to the Court of Appeals, New York’s court of last resort, where we ultimately prevailed for the homeowner.

In reversing the decisions of the courts below, the Court of Appeals first noted that while statutes are to be construed based on ordinary meaning, a literal and narrow interpretation that would thwart the statute’s settled purpose should be avoided. The court distinguished between mixed-use properties that are both residential and commercial [ex. storefront with an apartment above], from a house like the one in question that had an occasional and incidental business use of the homeowner. The Court confirmed that the legislature did not intend to disqualify homes with any non-residential uses, but only properties that were mixed-use. To deny expedited and inexpensive review to the homeowner here would frustrate the statutory objective.

Specifically, a residential taxpayer who occasionally uses a portion of their home for business is no more able to expend the resources for a regular tax certiorari proceeding than the owner of a home without any incidental business use. This tax appeal litigation of a house underscores that small claims is not always a small claim.

Florida: A second proposal to eliminate property taxes in Florida is now ready for a vote by the full House

Neither joint resolution has a Senate companion yet, meaning chances of going before the voters this fall is questionable.
While Florida’s top GOP leaders now all say they expect to put just one constitutional amendment on the ballot this fall on cutting property taxes, a joint resolution approved by a House committee Thursday is now set to go to the full House – the second such joint resolution to pass all of its assigned committees in the chamber this session.
The House Ways and Means Committee approved on a party-line vote a resolution (HJR 203) that would gradually increase the homestead exemption for non-school-related property taxes by $100,000 each year for 10 years.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Monique Miller, R-Palm Bay, said last week that one of the attractions of her proposal is that it wouldn’t inflict an immediate shock to local governments when it comes to a reduction in revenues, because it will be spread out for up to 10 years before fully taking affect. But she also boasted that it would provide tax relief to homesteaded property owners much sooner than that.

“Given that the median home price is about $350,000, most Floridians will have zero non-school ad valorem property taxes by 2030,” Miller told the State House Affairs Committee last week.

That prompted Rep. Robin Bartleman, D-Weston, to essentially repeat that prediction, saying that with the median home price in Florida between $300,000 and $400,000, more than 300 cities in the state will not be able to collect any property taxes after just three years.

“The fact that you’re putting it on the ballot that it’s 10 years when in reality by like year four or five by just doing the math they will all be phased out,” she said. “Is that fair to do to the voters, because 10 years is a reasonable glide path but, in reality, that glide path is shortened because of the home values.”

Miller acknowledged that some cities could be “phased out” of collecting any property taxes after just three years.

The public comment period of the meeting featured local government officials who traveled to Tallahassee to say that the idea of severely reducing or eliminating property taxes would be hugely detrimental to their residents.

George Kruse, a Republican commissioner from Manatee County, argued it is untrue to say all citizens want lower taxes. Manatee voters, he said, have consistently approved tax increases on the ballot in recent years for the school district, fire districts, and environmental needs.

“They just want smart use of tax and it’s up to us to determine how best to do that, and if we don’t that, every two years they get to vote half of us out, every four years they get to vote all of us out,” Kruse said.

George Kruse, a Republican commissioner from Manatee County, argued it is untrue to say all citizens want lower taxes. Manatee voters, he said, have consistently approved tax increases on the ballot in recent years for the school district, fire districts, and environmental needs.

“They just want smart use of tax and it’s up to us to determine how best to do that, and if we don’t that, every two years they get to vote half of us out, every four years they get to vote all of us out,” Kruse said.

Mariano referred to how Pasco voters have approved a “Penny for Pasco” one-cent sales tax on three different occasions, because it has helped fund parks, libraries, bike trails, and other amenities the community wants.

Nicole Wilson, a commissioner from Orange County, noted the resolution prohibits curbing the budgets for police and fire fighters, but does nothing about preserving funding for infrastructure. “Emergency response – not just the firefighters, paramedics, and law enforcement or 911 – need to be there when they call for help, but they need to be able to get there, and that’s infrastructure,” she said.

Miller’s resolution is the second property tax proposal that has passed all of its assigned committees in the House. A resolution (HJR 209) sponsored by Rep. Demi Busatta, R-Coral Gables, would create an exemption from non-school property taxes for $200,000 of a homestead property’s assessed value as long as the property is insured. It has already been added to the House calendar for consideration by the full chamber.

However, whether the resolution ultimately goes to the voters as a constitutional amendment is unknown at this time. Neither Busatta’s nor Miller’s resolutions have companions in the Florida Senate. A joint resolution must be approved by three-fifths of both chambers to qualify for the November ballot.

And House Speaker Daniel Perez recently joined with Gov. Ron DeSantis and Senate President Ben Albritton in saying it probably would better that only one such tax-related constitutional amendment go before the voters later this year. It would require 60% voter approval to become law.

California: SF faces nearly $1B budget deficit over declining property tax revenue

The City of San Francisco is staring down a growing budget deficit as the result of falling property values. For the next two fiscal years, San Francisco faces a $936 million budget deficit driven by anemic property tax revenues, the San Francisco Business Times reported. Property tax is predicted to rise nearly 2.4 percent this fiscal year before falling almost 2.8 percent in fiscal year 2027.

Presidio Bay Ventures’ purchase of 60 Spear Street in August 2023 serves as an example of what the city is dealing with. Presidio Bay bought the 160,000-square-foot downtown office building for $40.9 million – a sharp drop from the approximately $107 million that seller Clarion Partners paid for almost a decade earlier. With the building’s assessed value tumbling more than 60 percent, the city lost tens of millions of dollars in taxable value. City officials had pegged 60 Spear at a $121.8 million valuation in fiscal year 2023. By fiscal year 2025, the assessment dropped to $41.8 million. As a result, Presidio Bay’s annual property tax bill fell to about $494,000, down about 65 percent from the more than $1.4 million Clarion paid in its final year of ownership.

Office properties account for approximately 17 percent of San Francisco’s property tax base. Under California’s Proposition 13, assessed values can only rise 2 percent annually unless a building changes hands. When properties sell below their assessed value, the reset locks in a lower tax base that may take decades to recover from. Other downtown office buildings are selling below their peak-era valuations and prior tax assessments, trading at $200 to $400 per square foot. City officials say general fund property tax revenue fell almost 0.9 percent in the fiscal year ending June 2025 and has grown less than 2 percent in three of the past five years, according to the Business Times. In the past, property tax reliably climbed at or above the 2-percent Prop 13 cap.

A surge of assessment appeals has only made the growing problem worse. The San Francisco Office of the Assessor-Recorder, which handles the appeals, is working through a backlog of thousands of requests. Before the pandemic, the office would typically receive around 1,400 appeals per year, San Francisco Assessor-Recorder Joaquin Torres told the Business Times. In fiscal year 2024, it received 8,000 appeals; the number increased to 9,000 in 2025, which Torres said is an “at least 25-year high.”

Mayor Daniel Lurie, for the time being, is planning to work with building and community stakeholders, as well as the Board of Supervisors, to deliver a budget that “prioritizes core services” including clean and safe streets.

“We are not simply going to do everything we were doing a little less well,” Lurie told the Business Times. “Together as a city, we are going to decide what we want to prioritize and deliver world-class services.”

CANADA
Saskatchewan: Property assessment system “barely adequate”

Assessments in eight other provinces are completed annually or up to every three years. The timeliness of Saskatchewan assessments can be improved by increasing budgets and staff.

The Saskatchewan government opposes meaningful improvements to property tax assessments. Moreover, it hasn’t paid attention to hundreds of locally elected representatives in our villages, towns, and cities. Every resident pays property tax (directly or indirectly). It is based on your assessment.

Provincial law and the Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency stipulate how assessments are done. The evaluations are completed every four years, with 2025 to 2028 values based on market conditions as of Jan. 1, 2023. However, assessments in eight other provinces are completed annually or up to every three years. The timeliness of Saskatchewan assessments can be improved by increasing budgets and staff. Government refuses to spend more although extra resources would improve fairness.

Municipal councils make decisions about mill rates and where taxes are spent. As stakeholders, they should have a say in assessments but are forced to go “hat in hand” to plead for improvements.

The Saskatchewan Urban Municipalities Association (SUMA) has been concerned about assessment law for at least four years. In April 2022, it released a study and formed a stakeholder group to consider improvements. It proposed five changes and surveyed members to gauge support for the recommendations. It received more than 180 replies, no less than two-thirds agreeing.

SUMA’s proposals are sensible and responsible. Nevertheless, the province responded by introducing two incomplete amendments, ignoring a third recommendation with 84 per cent support from SUMA members. Two of SUMA’s five items require no changes to law but involve new efforts by government and Saskatchewan Assessment.

The first allows appeals to go directly to the Saskatchewan Municipal Board. A higher-level board is better equipped to deal with complex cases. The province agrees but has not stipulated applicable rules that will determine the effectiveness of the change.

A second change would ensure dialogue between property owners (or their representatives) and assessors. Meaningful discussions can result in valuation errors being resolved without appeal. If disagreement remains, unresolved issues have been well defined, resulting in fair and efficient hearings.

There is no excuse for tax agents, who are paid to represent property owners, to not meet with assessors. Unfortunately, the amendment does not ensure compliance. The proposed law must also require documented meetings, with attendees, properties identified, issues, and items of disagreement recorded. Areas of dispute should be noted and form the basis of an appeal.

A third recommendation is completely excluded from government’s amendments yet overwhelmingly supported by SUMA members. The survey asked if SUMA should advocate for the province to allow only one appeal for property valuations per evaluation cycle? Over 84 per cent were in favour.

The current law allows for appeals of the same assessment each year in the four-year cycle. This results in dozens of appeals going to boards of revision that are substantially the same year after year. The current law allows three “redos,’ a waste of time for busy boards and assessment staff.

Canadian jurisprudence and law (except for Saskatchewan assessments) allow for one appeal on an issue. A dispute is brought to the appropriate lower court. Lower court rulings can then be appealed to a higher court, which can only address original facts and law.

This “one kick at the can” system ensures the parties appearing at a lower court are well prepared and all disagreements addressed. Can the Saskatchewan government explain why its law deviates from legal norms? The government is satisfied with a cheap, barely adequate, property assessment system. Municipal governments and taxpayers deserve better.

EUROPE
France: Property owners’ tax to rise for 7.4 million French homes

Average increases are expected to be €63 and come after a re-evaluation of ‘comfort features’ such as indoor toilets

Around 7.4 million taxe foncière property tax bills are set to increase next year by an average of €63 due to updates to housing records. These updates will focus on so-called ‘comfort’ features, such as indoor toilets, water basins and heating systems.

These add additional fictitious m² to the property when calculating the final amount of the tax which is paid by the 32 million homeowners in France. Tax authorities say that many homes have these features – now standard elements of modern homes – but did not have them listed in housing records, reducing the amount of taxe foncière that owners pay.

Property owners affected will see their taxe foncière bills increase by around €63 on average, reports media outlet Le Parisien. It will bring in an additional €460 million or so for local authorities. Homeowners affected will be informed by letters sent out at the start of 2026, with the new amounts applying from the 2026 version of the bill (paid in October) and onwards in future years. Owners will be asked to contact tax authorities by April if they believe they have been targeted in error.

Around 20% of properties – 25% of houses and 15% of flats – in France are expected to be impacted. “It’s a matter of efficiency and fairness in taxation: everyone should pay according to the type of housing they own,” said Minister of Public Accounts, Amélie de Montchalin to FranceInfo.

Tax authorities insist the higher fees are simply “the application of property tax law and a compliance measure to ensure that the tax is paid correctly by the owners… It’s a matter of bringing things into compliance,” (quoted in media outlet Huffington Post). Authorities are carrying out the updates at the request of local authorities amid a search for revenue streams, as communes are hit by a lack of funding.

However, the plans have been criticised as ‘unfair’. “Is it legitimate to maintain a tax on having a toilet in your home? Is it legitimate to maintain a tax on having running water in your home?” said president of real estate site PAP Corinne Jolly to FranceInfo.

She argued that property tax calculations “haven’t been updated for decades,” and instead of adding to them, “the calculation should be greatly simplified… [basing it] on very simple parameters such as surface area, rather than trying to assess the quality of housing.” “It’s very difficult to update across tens of millions of homes,” she added.

A wider overhaul of the system used to calculate taxe foncière was previously scheduled for 2026, after several previous postponements, but was pushed back and is now likely to not happen until the 2030’s according to tax service contacts, so the increases in question do not relate to this.

A key part of the taxe foncière calculation is the theoretical annual rental value (valeur locative cadastrale; VLC) assigned to a given property, which increases annually based on inflation. Other elements affecting a given property’s bill include percentage tax rates set by councils.

In 2025, inflation increased the VLCs by 1.7% and many authorities choose to keep the same tax rate as in the previous year. Calculations of a property’s VLC are complex, including several impactful variants, one of which is the presence of ‘comfort’ features in a property.

Despite their name, these do not relate to elements homeowners in the 2020s might see as comfort features – such as air conditioning, modern cooking equipment, etc. – but those that would have been deemed such in the 1970s when the system was rolled out.

They include elements such as indoor toilets, running water, central heating, connection to mains electricity and gas, sinks, basins and bathtubs. The presence of each of these features adds a theoretical amount of m² to the property to take into consideration for the final VLC. This includes 5m² for a bathtub, 4m² for access to running water, 3m² for a toilet/W.C inside the house, 2m² for connection to mains electricity.

For example, a property of 70m² may have several comfort elements that increase its theoretical size, bringing the total taxable size of the property up to 110m². This is then halved (50% is deducted for estimated expenses for homeowners) before the local authority rate is applied to it to calculate the final bill.

Property owners must declare the completion of any works that could impact the taxe foncière to local authorities within 90 days (this is also required as they may need to pay the taxe d’aménagement on the works).

However, authorities believe that this practice has not been done in regards to millions of properties, particularly relating to these ‘comfort features’ which essentially all homes now have as standard.

In some cases, a change in ownership means current inhabitants would not know that the property technically did not have these elements listed.

Authorities will focus their efforts on properties at levels 1 – 6 on the 1-8 habitability scale (another element in the VLC calculation) meaning all those ranked from the highest ‘luxury’ level to ‘ordinary’ properties. It is presumed likely that any property with such a ranking will undoubtedly have these ‘comfort’ features in the 21st century, and information held otherwise is therefore erroneous.

As stated, property owners who are informed of an incoming tax increase due to the automatic re-evaluation but genuinely do not hold such elements in their property, should inform tax authorities so the new updated records can be altered.

Properties in categories 7 and 8, classified as dilapidated or uninhabitable, are not likely to systematically have such features and will therefore not be targeted in the campaign.

UK: Replace business rates with a land tax to boost growth

The damaging cycle of sharp rate increases followed by an outcry and last-minute reliefs has to stop. Landlords should pay the tax, not tenants

Business rates have long been a bugbear of the business community. Every three years, revaluation brings the same outcry from those whose bills increase. This year has been no exception, with pubs seeing their rateable values increase by 32 per cent from April, prompting warnings that the viability of many businesses will be in jeopardy.

Compounded by the expiry of pandemic-era support reliefs, the hospitality sector will see very large increases in their tax liabilities. The chancellor is said to be preparing yet another round of reliefs for pubs, but this revolving door of fixes is costly, destabilising and entirely predictable. It also misses a basic economic truth: in the long run, business rates are not ultimately paid by businesses at all.

Both economic theory and real-world evidence suggest that when business rates bills are raised or lowered, rents adjust so that the total amount paid by the tenant is broadly unaffected. In the long run, then, it is landlords who will be made worse off from higher business rates – or who will benefit from permanent rate reliefs.

Of course, this doesn’t help right now – pub tenants and other occupiers facing a higher rates bill are locked into leases and so can’t immediately negotiate a reduction in their rent. But it does point to a way out of the damaging three-year cycle of revaluations, protests from the worst-affected sectors and hastily assembled relief packages that damage the public finances and take business owners’ focus away from running their companies.

If liability for paying rates bills were shifted to the landlord tenants wouldn’t have to worry about changes to business rates or having to renegotiate rents when bills increased. This wouldn’t make them better off – rents would still adjust to offset the fact that tenants would no longer be paying business rates – but would avoid these costly periods of readjustment.

Shifting formal responsibility would also spare businesses the administrative burden of managing property tax, reducing red tape and simplifying compliance. It would reduce administration costs for local authorities by reducing the number of taxpayers from two million tenants to 800,000 landowners.

That reform should be paired with something more ambitious – and pro-growth.

Business rates today tax both land and buildings. As the Nobel laureate William Vickrey observed, this “is, economically speaking, a combination of one of the worst taxes – the part that is assessed on real-estate improvements – and one of the best – the tax on land or site value”. Taxing land values is efficient. Taxing improvements is not.

Under the current system, any improvements to a building – whether replacing an existing structure, adding solar panels to a roof, putting electric charging points in a car park or even adding some plant and machinery that is deemed integral to the building – can increase the property’s rateable value, and thus its tax bill.

That means business rates actively discourage investment in commercial property. Business rates should therefore be replaced with a commercial landowner levy based purely on site values.

By removing property upgrades from the tax net, the reform should boost investment and lead to a higher-quality capital stock better matched to the needs of businesses in the UK. We estimate that this would boost national income by 0.25 per cent in the long run.

The government has the chance to ensure that this is the last time that businesses are blindsided by destabilising hikes in business rates. But it would have to move quickly.

Ministers should launch a consultation on a new commercial landowner tax this summer, with full details announced in the autumn budget, allowing the new system to be introduced in April 2029.

Formal liability would shift to landlords at the next rent review or lease renewal after that date, respecting existing contractual arrangements, while any higher tax bills would be phased in over four years, giving both landlords and tenants time to adjust.

It’s often said that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. This seems particularly true of business rates – they’ve been with us in one form or another since the Vagabonds Act of 1572 – but we can take steps to minimise the economic damage they cause.

After years of disruption and piecemeal fixes, it is time for bold, pro-growth reform to show that Britain is once again a place worth investing in.

 

Compliments of the International Property Institute – a member of the EACCNY