Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has intensified his crusade to abolish property taxes, vowing to “end the rent” that homeowners pay to local governments.
DeSantis didn’t hold back Tuesday morning in a fiery press conference that started as a bill signing and turned into a full-blown indictment of the nation’s broken tax system.
Standing before a crowd of beachgoers and Florida homeowners, DeSantis announced the signing of Senate Bill 1622, repealing a provision related to the “customary use” doctrine that had caused confusion over beach access rights.
But what stole the spotlight wasn’t the bill—it was the Governor’s bold attack on property taxes and what he called “an unjust system built on punishing people for owning property.”
DeSantis hinted at a 2026 ballot initiative that would allow Floridians to vote on eliminating or slashing property taxes.
Here’s the corrected version with proper punctuation:
DeSantis:
The folks here really deserve it. I look around at people here, and every time I run into someone, it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I’m a Florida resident now.”“When did you buy? Where are you at?”
They’ll be like, “Oh, I’m in Santa Rosa Beach.”
“When did you buy the property?”
“Oh, I bought it in 2018.”
I’m like, “You’ve made a lot of money off that property since then,” because the values have gone up. While that’s good—because people that own it have more equity and more wealth—the reality is, if they’re going to come tell you your house is worth twice as much as what you purchased it for and you’ve got to pay higher taxes as a result, that’s a negative of having rising property values. And it’s an unrealized gain.
You sell your house? It’s one thing on a transaction for someone to say, “Okay, you’re taxed,” like a sales tax. But to say you’re just enjoying property and, all of a sudden, the value rises—so you have to pony up?
We don’t really do that in anything else. I mean, you buy a stock, you hold it, and then you’re taxed when you sell it. The stock doubles—they don’t just tax you as you hold it.
So, unrealized gains is not the way you want to run a tax system. But our property tax system basically relies on these unrealized gains.
So, we’re going to work hard to provide relief. But ultimately, we can’t, as elected leaders, deliver the relief without the voters approving it at the ballot box.
Just get ready—you’re going to have an opportunity to do that. I’m sure it’s going to be very favorably received in Walton County—and probably everywhere else in this part of the state.
WATCH:
BREAKING: Governor Ron DeSantis goes off on property taxes, calls them unfair and ultimately wants them ABOLISHED.
“To say you’re just enjoying property and all of a sudden the value [goes up], so you have to pony up [to the government]? We don’t really do that with ANYTHING… pic.twitter.com/grRPByrk3G
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) June 24, 2025
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