The exemption on the November ballot does not touch your CDD, your fire assessment, or your school tax. Type your address and see your own bill, line by line, before and after.
Every figure is calculated from your own parcel record on your county's tax roll and that county's published millage rates. Where a number depends on something not yet final, like 2026 rates, the page says so.
A purchase resets the assessed value to what you pay. Put in a price and pick where.
Everything below, printed. What an exemption actually is, a worked example on a real bill, eleven communities broken out, the real non-ad valorem figures from six TRIM notices, the December residency deadline, and the four things people are getting wrong.
Print it, forward it, bring it to your HOA meeting.
The relief is real. The homestead exemption on non-school taxes goes from $51,411 today to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028, with inflation adjustments after that. On a typical homesteaded parcel in these communities that is a reduction of roughly $1,068 to $1,671 a year by 2028, and for some it takes the non-school line to nothing.
The saving is capped. The exemption rises by about $198,600. Multiply that by your own non-school millage rate and that is the most anyone can save, whatever the house is worth. In unincorporated Sarasota County the ceiling is $1,068 a year, or $89 a month. In the City of North Port it is $1,671, or $139 a month. In Charlotte County it is $1,853, or $154 a month.
A bigger house does not get a bigger break. A $2 million home in unincorporated Sarasota County saves the same $89 a month as a $300,000 one, because both use the whole exemption and the exemption is a fixed dollar amount. To reach the ceiling your assessed value only has to be at or above $250,000. Everything above that saves nothing extra. Where the house sits changes the answer far more than what it cost.
What it does to a mortgage payment, if your taxes are escrowed. A $1,068 annual reduction is about $89 a month, and it does not arrive when the votes are counted. The new amount first appears on the tax bill mailed in November 2027, and your servicer resets the escrow at its next annual analysis after that. 2027 is a partial step, so realistically a smaller payment lands in early 2028 and the full version in early 2029. Full worked example and the timing, here.
The exemption is indexed, so growth does not quietly eat it. From 2029 the $250,000 rises with inflation. Your assessed value can only rise 3% a year while you are homesteaded. The two move together, which is why the non-school line stays at or near zero for a long time rather than creeping back up. Worked forward on one Palmero parcel assessed at $246,600, the total bill returns to today's figure around 2037 rather than 2031, and by then the same house without the amendment would be paying about $1,300 a year more.
There is a second provision that gets less attention. The annual cap on assessment increases for non-homestead property drops from 10% to 5%. That applies to second homes, rentals and commercial property, and it makes what those owners pay more predictable.
It is not your whole bill. The increased exemption applies only to the non-school portion of your ad valorem tax. Your school tax keeps the same $25,000 exemption it has today, and non-ad valorem assessments are not affected at all: CDD, fire, solid waste, stormwater.
How much reaches zero varies enormously by community. The figure repeated statewide is that roughly 60% of homesteaded owners would owe no non-school property tax. Across the eleven communities broken out below it runs between 6% and 44%, because the exemption is a fixed dollar amount and assessed values here are high. Type any address in Sarasota, Charlotte or Manatee County above and you get the answer for that parcel rather than an average.
This page takes no position on how anyone should vote. It exists because the figures in circulation are statewide and the answer in any particular community is different. Both campaigns are making their case elsewhere: Vote Yes on 3, funded by Florida Realtors, and Florida TaxWatch and the Florida Association of Special Districts among those raising concerns.
The calculator above covers every residential parcel in Sarasota, Charlotte and Manatee counties. These eleven communities are broken out because they are the ones people here ask about. Every homesteaded parcel in each, modeled at the full $250,000 exemption in 2028. Owe zero non-school tax is the share of homesteaded owners whose non-school ad valorem tax would fall to nothing. The saving column is the reduction on that one line only, and it does not include school tax or anything on the non-ad valorem side.
| Community | Homesteads | Median assessed | Owe zero non-school tax | Median saving in 2028 |
|---|
The saving column repeats the same few values because the median home in each community is assessed high enough to use the full $250,000 exemption. The saving is then the difference between the old and new exemption at that parcel’s own millage rate, and most of these communities sit in one of two tax districts. Gulf Gate Woods differs slightly because it also carries a lighting district levy. Homes assessed below about $300,000 see a smaller saving, which is why the percentage column and the saving column do not move together. I built this from the Sarasota County certified tax roll. The model adds back the current homestead exemption, applies the new amount, and floors at zero, leaving veteran, senior, widow and disability exemptions intact. Millage is the county's published 2025 rate for each parcel's own tax district. 2026 rates are not final until the September budget hearings.
Everything above is about what a homeowner stops paying. The same amount stops arriving somewhere, and that is worth saying plainly because the ballot language did not.
The amendment guarantees nothing about service funding. The Property Appraiser FAQs say so directly. No minimum is protected for law enforcement, fire, EMS, roads or anything else. Those stay where they have always been: decided every year, by each taxing authority, in its own budget.
A judge said the same thing in stronger terms. On 3 August 2026 a Leon County circuit judge ordered the ballot title and summary rewritten, finding them misleading. He specifically rejected the phrase about ensuring funding for core services, on the grounds that the amendment does not guarantee any funding level. The state chose not to appeal and the measure stays on the November ballot. What voters read changed; what the amendment does did not.
And the amendment does not limit what else a local government can charge. Non-ad valorem assessments, the ones on the bottom half of your tax bill, are set separately and are not affected by any exemption. What happens to them after 2027 is a budget question and nobody can answer it yet, including me.
The state has put numbers on the scale of it. The Revenue Estimating Conference, in the House's final bill analysis, estimated the reduction in local non-school property tax revenue at $4.95 billion in fiscal year 2027-28, $8.78 billion the following year, and $11.86 billion the year after. Those are the state's own figures, not an opponent's.
And there is a provision on the other side that gets little attention. The amendment also requires counties and municipalities to spend property tax revenue solely on a listed set of purposes: public safety, education and schools, infrastructure, natural resources, bond debt service and retirement benefits. That is a restriction on what the remaining money can be spent on. It is not a guarantee of how much there will be, and the two are easy to confuse in either direction.
This section exists because a reader called Keith raised it in a Facebook comment and he was right that the page was incomplete without it. If you spot something else missing, text 941-662-9941.
Source. The Sarasota County Property Appraiser's parcel and sales database download, 2026 certified roll, obtained 11 September 2026 from the county's own download data page. Millage comes from the same office's published 2025 rate table by tax district.
How communities were defined. By subdivision code on the county roll, not by ZIP code and not by mailing address. A ZIP grouping would be wrong here: Gran Paradiso, IslandWalk, Renaissance, Sunstone and Brightmore all carry Venice mailing addresses but sit inside the City of North Port for tax purposes and pay its municipal levy. Sarasota National carries a Venice address, is marketed as part of Wellen Park, and is unincorporated. Grouping any of these by ZIP would attribute the wrong millage to thousands of parcels.
What the model does. For each homesteaded parcel it adds back the current homestead exemption, applies the new exemption to non-school millage, and floors the result at zero. Veteran, senior, widow and disability exemptions are left intact and continue to apply to both school and non-school levies. School taxable value is assessed value less $25,000 less any of those personal exemptions, which is the structure the amendment leaves in place.
What it was checked against. Nine 2026 TRIM notices across four tax districts, pulled from the Property Appraiser's own site. Non-school taxable value, school taxable value and total millage matched exactly on every one. Recomputing one notice using the rates printed on that notice produced a figure one cent from the county's own total.
Where it is weak. Four things, stated plainly.
The 2026 millage rates are not final. Budget hearings run through September, and the figures here use the county's published 2025 rates. Expect a difference of a few dollars either way.
Non-ad valorem assessments are not modeled. CDD, fire, solid waste and stormwater appear on your bill and are unaffected by the amendment, but they are not in the county's parcel download and are not calculated here. Nine 2026 TRIM notices were pulled by hand to put real figures against that, at least one per community and three for Palmera, and the spread is wide. A Gran Paradiso parcel carries a West Villages CDD line of $1,949 a year. An IslandWalk parcel in the same district carries $563. Three Palmera at Wellen Park parcels carry $3,230.26, $3,910.97 and $4,364.78. Palmero and Talon Preserve in Nokomis have no CDD at all. Those figures appear against each community in the results, labeled as single parcels rather than averages.
The calculator covers all 542,376 residential parcels in Sarasota, Charlotte and Manatee counties. The eleven communities in the table above are broken out separately because they are the ones people here ask about, and they skew newer and higher assessed than the county as a whole. Communities with older housing stock show a higher share reaching zero.
And it assumes the amendment passes as written. It needs 60% approval, a Leon County judge ordered the ballot summary rewritten on 3 August 2026 for being misleading, and implementing legislation would still follow.
The data. Download the community results as a CSV. If you are writing about this and want the parcel-level methodology or a different cut of the numbers, call 941-662-9941.
Every number here comes from two public sources, and you can check a single address against both in about two minutes.
Sarasota County Property Appraiser parcel search gives you your assessed value, your exemptions and a PDF of your own TRIM notice.
The county's own tax estimator works from a parcel number.
If a figure on this page does not match the county, the county is right and I want to know. Text is easiest: 941-662-9941. Calling works too.
3 November 2026. The vote. It needs 60% approval, not a simple majority.
1 January 2027. If it passes, the $150,000 exemption takes effect. It first appears on the August 2027 TRIM notice and the bill mailed in November 2027.
1 January 2028. The exemption rises to $250,000, with inflation adjustments from 2029.
And one more date. Anyone who is a permanent Florida resident by 31 December 2026 is eligible for the larger exemption from the start. Anyone establishing Florida residency on or after 1 January 2027 begins at $50,000 and waits four years. On a home here that difference is several thousand dollars a year.
Four of these communities have a home value tool calibrated to their own recorded sales rather than a national average.
Gran Paradiso · IslandWalk · Palmero · Talon Preserve
And the rest have market data pages: Grand Palm · Sarasota National · Renaissance · Sunstone · Brightmore · Sunrise Preserve
Related: the Florida homestead exemption explained · how gated community and CDD fees work · a home value estimate for any Florida address
This is arithmetic on public records. It is not tax advice, not legal advice, and not an appraisal. It assumes the amendment passes as written, assumes your homestead status does not change, and uses the most recently published millage rates rather than rates that have not been set yet.
For anything that affects what you actually owe, talk to the Sarasota County Property Appraiser at 941-861-8200, or your accountant.
Call or text 941-662-9941 · [email protected]