Frequently Asked Questions

Short answer: only if no replacement revenue is identified.

What the evidence shows: every state examined in this guide that reduced or eliminated a piece of property tax — through incremental caps, dedicated funds, or tax swaps — paired it with a specific alternative funding source. Proposals without one (North Dakota's 2012 and 2024 amendments) failed at the ballot box.

What remains uncertain: whether any specific replacement mechanism would actually raise enough money in practice, and how quickly, is a fiscal-modeling question this guide doesn't attempt to answer for Kansas specifically — see The Replacement Revenue Math for what's known so far.

No. Kansas citizens cannot place a measure directly on the ballot. Constitutional changes in Kansas can only originate from the legislature.

No state currently has zero property tax. North Dakota voters have twice rejected full elimination (2012 and 2024). Some states and jurisdictions have eliminated property tax on specific categories, such as owner-occupied primary residences, while retaining it on other property types — Florida's 2026 ballot measure and Pennsylvania's school-tax elimination bills both take this narrower approach.

This depends heavily on the specific plan and on whether landlords pass along savings; several current proposals (including Pennsylvania's) include provisions requiring landlords to pass tax savings on to tenants for a period of time.

Even partial measures raise the same fundamental question — how do local governments keep providing services with less revenue — so they draw much of the same debate that a full repeal proposal would. Kansas's 2025–2026 sessions illustrate how contested even modest, incremental changes have been. See The Path to Repeal for the specifics.

Not on its own, based on current Kansas revenue figures — property tax and general sales tax raise almost identical shares of total state and local revenue today, which means fully replacing one with the other would take something closer to doubling the sales tax collected, not a small add-on. See The Replacement Revenue Math for the full breakdown.

Yes — two things. If you think your home is overvalued, Kansas gives you a real appeal process (see How to Appeal Your Valuation). And if you're a senior, disabled, a veteran, or have a lower household income, you may qualify for one of three existing state refund programs (see Property Tax Relief Programs You Can Use Now) that many eligible Kansans never file for.

A land value tax shifts more of the tax burden onto the value of land itself and less onto buildings and improvements, so that building, expanding, or renovating a home doesn't automatically raise the tax bill. It has a track record in about 20 Pennsylvania municipalities and is being tested at scale in Detroit. It's worth understanding as a structural option, but it's a restructuring of property tax, not a path to eliminating it outright — see Other Ways to Fund Repeal.

In principle, yes, but Kansas would need to identify a comparable dedicated, renewable revenue source — Alaska and North Dakota both rely on large oil and mineral revenues that Kansas doesn't have at the same scale. It's also worth noting that even Alaska, despite eliminating state income and sales tax through its fund, has not eliminated local property tax. See Other Ways to Fund Repeal for the full picture.

Short answer: no U.S. state has fully eliminated property tax yet, but every model covered in this guide has been implemented in some partial form somewhere.

What the evidence shows: states that got furthest combined a named replacement mechanism with a narrower target (one levy, or one property category) rather than the entire system at once.

What remains uncertain: whether that same sequence would work for full elimination specifically, rather than just partial relief — no state has tested that combination all the way through yet. See How Other States Have Tried This for the full comparative record.

Because the tax rate applies to assessed value, not appraised (market) value — Kansas assesses owner-occupied homes at 11.5% of appraised value. See How Property Tax Works and the Glossary.

Because your bill is assessed value times the mill levy — if your property's appraised value rises, your bill can rise even at an unchanged rate.

No single entity does. Your bill combines separately set mill levies from your school district, county, city, and any applicable special districts (fire, library, etc.) — see How Property Tax Works.

Because each of Kansas's 105 counties, plus every city, school district, and special district within them, sets its own mill levy independently based on its own budget. See the county-by-county section of How Property Tax Works.

Renters don't receive a property tax bill directly, but landlords typically factor their own property tax costs into rent. Whether a reduction in property tax would lower rent depends on the specific proposal and the local rental market — some proposals elsewhere include provisions requiring landlords to pass savings through, others don't.

Commercial and agricultural property are assessed at different percentages than owner-occupied residential property under Kansas's classification system, and rural commercial property in particular can carry a heavy effective tax burden relative to value — see the Iola example in How Property Tax Works.

Local governments can raise their mill levy to keep collecting the same total revenue even if assessed values drop — Kansas's revenue neutral rate process requires a public hearing before doing so, but doesn't prevent it. See the Glossary entry for "revenue neutral rate."

Yes, in principle — the state's own portion is a single 20-mill levy dedicated to school finance (about $875 million/year), separate from county, city, and other local levies. Eliminating just that piece is a much smaller undertaking than eliminating property tax statewide; a 2026 proposal to do exactly this (funded by a 0.75-cent sales tax increase) is covered in The Replacement Revenue Math.

No — Article 11, Section 1 of the Kansas Constitution requires the legislature to provide for property taxation, so an ordinary statute can't eliminate it outright. See The Path to Repeal.

This guide doesn't have a specific answer for Kansas — it's exactly the kind of transition question Amendment Language & Legislative Mechanics notes a real amendment would need to address explicitly, since many local governments have issued bonds backed by property tax revenue.