Florida Amendment 3 property tax calculator

What Amendment 3 actually says

It raises the homestead exemption to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028 — but only against the taxes that are not schools. The school portion keeps its same $25,000 exemption, so the bill falls a long way without ever reaching zero.

Article VII, sections 4, 6 and 9 of the Florida Constitution as rewritten by CS/HJR 1F in the form it passed, and the House staff analysis. From 2029 the amounts are indexed to inflation; here we assume 2.5%.

The date to write down is 31 December 2026

Anyone who is a permanent Florida resident before that day gets the full exemption. Anyone who arrives after it is capped at $50,000 until their fifth year. And to collect any of it you have to have filed for homestead: form DR-501, due by 1 March. How that filing works, step by step.

What almost nobody is saying: the saving has a ceiling

What comes off is an amount in dollars, not a percentage, so above $250,000 of assessed value the saving is exactly the same for a $300,000 house and a $3 million one. In Miami-Dade, $2,339 a year in 2028. Not a dollar more, however expensive the house.

Three homes in the same county, all three with homestead and all three with the assessment rising the 3% Save Our Homes allows:

Miami-Dade millage (18.4893), of which 6.6330 is the school district and is untouched by the amendment. Of the $4,716 the middle house would pay in 2028, $2,649 is school tax.

The biggest winner in percentage terms is not the most expensive house: it is whoever has been in theirs the longest. The 3% cap left their assessed value far below market, and an exemption in dollars eats almost all of a small base. The home assessed at $200,000 falls 60%; the one at $900,000, 14%.

What it saves in each of the 67 counties

It depends on the non-school millage, and it runs from $3,010 a year in St. Lucie to $965 in Walton. That is the maximum saving — the one that applies to any home assessed above $250,000.

2025 millage from the Florida Department of Revenue, the most recent published. Each county name links to its property appraiser, where your own assessed value lives. Below $250,000 of assessed value the saving is smaller in dollars — but the non-school part of your bill disappears entirely.

If you move to Florida in 2027, this is not for you

Anyone who establishes residency on 1 January 2027 or later gets $50,000 of exemption, not $250,000, and that lasts until their fifth year. On a home assessed at $400,000 in Miami-Dade that is $3,542 more than the neighbour, in two years alone.

And a detail that catches people out: the $50,000 a newcomer gets is less than the $52,748 today's law already takes off, so in 2028 they would pay $18 more than if the amendment had never existed. If you are in the middle of a move, the timing is worth more than the negotiation.

If it is a rental or a second home

The exemption does not reach it: that one is only for the home you live in. What does change is that the cap on assessment increases drops from 10% to 5% a year from 2027, for everything that is not homestead — second homes, rentals, commercial property and land.

That cap only bites in years when the market rises faster than it does. If your area goes up 4%, it makes no difference whether the cap is 5 or 10. But the benefit compounds: every year the cap holds the assessment down it carries into the next one, and through a run like 2021–2023 the gap between 5% and 10% is several thousand dollars a year, permanently. In the calculator above, say you will not live in it and enter the growth you expect.

The catch: millage is set every September

The amendment removes taxable base; it does not set rates. Local governments would be short $4.6 billion in the first year and $8.4 billion in the second, on the Legislature's own estimate, and the fastest way to replace that is to raise the millage — which is voted every September and needs no amendment at all.

That is what the “what if they raise the millage?” field is for. The amendment does include a counterweight: it requires property tax revenue to be spent only on public safety, education, infrastructure, environment, bonds and pensions. What it does not do is stop the rate going up.

When it is voted, when it applies, and what you have to do

It is voted on 3 November 2026 and needs 60%. If it passes, it takes effect on 1 January 2027, and the first bill carrying the new exemption is the one that arrives in November 2027. There is nothing new to apply for: it lands on the homestead you already have.

• If you already have homestead, you do nothing — your county appraiser applies the new exemption.
• If you own a home and never filed, that is the urgent errand. Without homestead there is no new exemption and no old one. Form DR-501 is due by 1 March, and the requirement is to be a permanent resident as of 1 January of that year.
• This changes neither the 3% cap nor portability. Both stay as they are, and portability stacks on top: it lowers the assessed value before the exemption bites into it.

Where these numbers come from

The amendment itself: Article VII, sections 4, 6 and 9 of the Florida Constitution as rewritten by CS/HJR 1F in the form it passed, plus the House staff analysis h0001z.SAC — both linked above, and both read in full rather than summarised from press coverage. Millage for all 67 counties from the Florida Department of Revenue's “Millage and Taxes Levied” report, 2025 edition. The current homestead exemption and the Save Our Homes cap are set by s. 196.031 and s. 193.155 of the Florida Statutes. The second exemption layer is $26,411 in 2026 and is indexed to inflation; the 2.5% we carry it forward at is our assumption, not a published figure, and so is the 3% annual assessment growth.

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