The Full Guide · 6 Parts Politics

The Whole Story on Florida Amendment 3, From the Ballot Fight to Your Bill

Florida's Amendment 3 rewrites your property tax bill, and the mailer leaves out most of the machinery. We took it apart in five parts. Start here.

Todd Ruffner-Schoenfeld Editor in chief. A knack for the fine print, and likes it. 29 Aug 2026 2 min read 6 sources E.G. v4.17

Aerial view of rows of single-family homes with tile roofs and pools in a Florida residential neighborhood — Photograph: Ameer Basheer. Licensed via Unsplash.

Amendment 3 is on your Florida ballot on November 3rd, and the first thing worth knowing is that the name the state wanted to print on it got thrown out. A Leon County judge looked at “Save Our Homes From Excessive Property Taxes” and said that reads like a pitch, not a description, and a ballot is supposed to explain. That is a fair warning about the whole measure. It does real things to your tax bill, to your county’s budget, and to the services that budget pays for, and almost none of it fits on a mailer.

So we did not try to cram it into one article. We took it apart in five, each answering one plain question, and gathered them here. Start at the top, or jump to the part you actually need.

The short version

If you read nothing else, read this:

Amendment 3 raises the homestead exemption on the non-school part of your bill from $50,000 today to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028, then lets it climb with inflation. Your school taxes do not change.
The cut is real. On a modest paid-off home it can wipe out most of the non-school bill. Run through my own Clermont house, it comes to about $1,960 a year once it fully lands.
Every dollar it cuts is a dollar your county and city stop collecting. The state’s nonpartisan estimators put the recurring loss near $12 billion a year once the full exemption is in.
It is not aimed at the struggling homeowner. Every homesteaded house gets it, and the more the house is worth, the bigger the break, right up to the cap.
It also fences what is left of local property tax to “core public needs,” which is where the fight over libraries, senior vans, and county services begins.

The five parts

Where to start

New to it, start with Part 1 and read straight through. If you only want the number for your own house, Part 3 is the one with the math you can copy. And whatever the mailer in your driveway tells you, remember that the people who wrote the amendment could not get its own name past a judge.

Sources and further reading

Text of the proposed constitutional amendment: homestead exemption on non-school levies rising to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028, indexed to inflation after, with no change to school taxes and a “solely for core public needs” spending provision.
Florida Revenue Estimating Conference: recurring statewide revenue loss near $12 billion a year once the full exemption is in effect.
Florida Policy Institute: Amendment 3 ballot summary and the spending-restriction language.
Leon County Circuit Court, August 2026: ruling striking the state’s proposed ballot title; revised title from the Attorney General.
Lake County and Pinellas County Property Appraisers: millage rates, the exemption schedule, and county-level revenue estimates. Florida Department of Revenue: TRIM notice and homestead exemption structure; Save Our Homes assessment cap.
Florida Phoenix and Florida Politics: the politics of Amendment 3, including the sheriffs’ and firefighters’ opposition.

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The Full Series

Florida Amendment 3

5 parts

Written by Todd Ruffner-Schoenfeld Editor in chief. A knack for the fine print, and likes it.

Todd Ruffner-Schoenfeld has spent his working life being handed things he did not yet understand. He started at the bottom, a developer in a bullpen, and worked his way up to running IT. The places were a strange assortment: consulting firms, accounting firms, a biotech startup, a tech startup in Silicon Valley and, of all places, Chiquita. Four small businesses of his own along the way. The work never really changed. Get into something unfamiliar, find out what is actually going on, and help someone make a hard decision with it. HeadLines Decoded is that job, pointed at the news.