New construction increases revenue, too, of course. If your county’s 100$ in revenue came from taxes on 100 houses, and in the past year people built 100 more houses, the county’ll get double the revenue this year than it would have gotten with only the original 100 houses.

But, if the real estate market goes crazy, and all the properties double in value, the revenue doesn’t double. Instead, the tax RATE is adjusted down so that the county gets the same $103 it’d have gotten if the values hadn’t changed.

No, I meant the homestead exemption, but the SOH plays into it…A complicated accounting scheme.

Which, always, winds up as a one-way ratchet because there is no mechanism short of revolution by which the citizens can reduce the size and appetite of “government,” and even that drastic step usually results in just a different group performing the same dollar extractions under different labels.

Then again, our property insurance rates in FL also cover potential hurricane losses and our premiums are about double those that apply for similar structures in other states [at least in VA, MI, or MO].

I am also waiting to learn just where the replacement revenue is going to come from via DeSantis’s ideas, as FL is also a no-income-tax state [FL, TX, TN, WA, a few others] and sales taxes are generally in the 6-7% range for most counties
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While it might be nice to just pay specific fees for all of the various government services we would claim to want, that would end up being regressive for lower income folks, so the wealth oriented PT is progressive (and probably generally accepted partly on that basis).

Fortunately Texas has its godawful franchise tax, on every taxable entity doing business in or formed in or organized in Texas. Texas knows quite well how to collect taxes. Online businesses find it a PITA.

I live in Washington, which also does not (yet) have state income tax, but we also have a godawful B&O tax, on gross business receipts. (Not profits, receipts.)

When public schools are funded by property taxes, and property appreciates significantly (like in the Seattle metro area), they get more and more revenue which they expand their budget to spend. Property values drop, or the levy expires, and they want to keep up their bloated budgets so they soak the taxpayer again, doesn’t matter if there’s more or fewer kids enrolled. Same thing happens to our fire district, funded the same way.

In my town of 30,000, our middle school has an Astroturf field with fancy scoreboard and big lights–for 11 and 12 year olds to play flag football. Our district publishes a glossy magazine where you can see all the people who work there who have nothing to do with instruction.