How much revenue do Florida counties and cities currently collect from property taxes annually?
Executive summary
Florida’s cities and counties rely heavily on ad valorem (property) taxes, but the exact current annual collections across all counties and municipalities are not directly stated in the documents provided; however, multiple state and policy sources allow a constrained estimate that local governments collect tens of billions annually from property levies, with one policy analysis putting current homestead-based collections at roughly $7.8 billion for counties, $7.8 billion for school districts and about $3 billion for cities — a shorthand that signals the overall scale and the stakes of proposed cuts [1] [2] [3].
1. What the available numbers actually say and don’t say
Public reporting and advocacy groups document the centrality of property taxes to local budgets and offer partial dollar estimates, but no single snippet here provides a definitive statewide total of current collections across every county and city; the Florida Department of Revenue’s Property Tax Data Portal and County Profiles contain the raw ad valorem valuation and tax data needed for an exact statewide sum, yet those files were referenced rather than tallied in the sources provided [4] [5] [6] [7].
2. The clearest headline figures in circulation
Analysts and policy groups have quantified what would be lost if homestead property taxes were eliminated: the Florida Policy Institute’s preliminarily cited Department of Revenue data estimates counties and school districts would each forfeit about $7.8 billion and cities would need to replace roughly $3 billion — a triptych of figures journalists and policymakers have used to illustrate the magnitude of current dependence on property tax revenue tied to homesteads [1].
3. Why those single-number estimates are partial and potentially misleading
Those $7.8B/$7.8B/$3B figures focus on homestead exemptions and the revenue tied to homesteaded properties; they are not presented as the totality of all property-tax receipts (which also include non‑homestead residential, commercial, industrial and special-district levies) and therefore understate total ad valorem collections when misread as comprehensive statewide totals [1] [2].
4. Independent corroboration and broader estimates
Reporting and advocacy pieces underscore that property taxes are the largest source of local tax revenue in Florida, and other analyses estimate statewide shortfalls from proposed eliminations in the tens of billions — for example, the Florida Policy Institute and Bond Buyer coverage cite studies and projections suggesting a $43 billion or similarly large revenue gap under some proposals, which aligns with the conclusion that total annual property tax collections across counties and cities are on the order of multiple tens of billions rather than a single-digit billion figure [3] [2].
5. Political context and competing agendas shaping the numbers
The debate over cutting or eliminating property taxes is politically charged: the governor’s proposed budget set aside $300 million for smaller counties in a 2026 proposal, a figure that critics say is far short of what would be required to replace local property-tax revenue, and advocacy groups such as the Florida League of Cities and the Florida Association of Counties have emphasized the deep fiscal dependence of local governments on those taxes [8] [3] [9]. Proponents frame cuts as taxpayer relief; opponents warn of destabilizing funding gaps for essential services.
6. How to get a precise current total
For an exact, up‑to‑date statewide total of property tax collections by counties and municipalities, the authoritative sources are the Florida Department of Revenue’s Data Portal and the Department of Financial Services’ annual local government reports; those datasets contain parcel counts, assessed values and actual collections by county and municipal jurisdiction and are explicitly cited as the sources for granular revenue estimates [4] [5] [7] [6]. The materials provided here point to those datasets but do not themselves contain a compiled statewide sum.