Replacing the Irreplaceable: Analyzing Revenue Alternatives for Ohio Property Taxes (Walczak, 2026)

Summary

"Replacing the Irreplaceable: Analyzing Revenue Alternatives for Ohio Property Taxes," by Jared Walczak, is a Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Working Paper (June 2026). It quantifies the fiscal consequences of a live 2026 Ohio constitutional amendment proposal that would eliminate property taxes entirely, removing roughly $21.1 billion per year in revenue currently funding schools and municipalities statewide.

The Findings

Modeling what would be needed to replace that revenue without a property tax, Walczak finds: a flat state income tax of 8.24% (10.29% combined with existing local income taxes) would be required, or alternatively a 13.36% state sales tax (14.53% combined average state-and-local rate) — with a graduated income tax alternative producing top state-level rates above 12% under central assumptions. Each option produces substantial divergence from current tax burden distributions: shifting from a property tax (which falls on accumulated wealth) to income or consumption taxes materially changes who pays and how much, independent of the overall revenue-neutral target.

What the Paper Does Not Model

Notably — and this matters for how the wiki frames the piece — the paper does not propose or model a land value tax alternative at all. Despite the Lincoln Institute's general land-economics orientation, this specific paper compares only income-tax and sales-tax replacements for Ohio's conventional (land-plus-improvements) property tax; it does not examine whether shifting the existing property tax base toward land value specifically, or adopting a genuine LVT, would avoid the stark rate increases and distributional shifts the income- and sales-tax alternatives produce.

Relation to the Georgist Case

This is valuable as a cautionary case study, read alongside the wiki's split-rate taxation and existing Cincinnati LVT simulation coverage: it quantifies exactly how costly it is, in tax-rate and distributional terms, to abandon a property tax base in favor of taxing labor or consumption instead — the mainstream policy alternatives Georgists argue are worse trades than shifting the existing base toward land value. The paper's silence on an LVT alternative is itself notable: it suggests even a land-economics-focused institution did not treat land value taxation as an obvious candidate worth modeling in this specific Ohio context, which is worth an honest acknowledgment rather than reading a Georgist conclusion into a paper that never tested one.

Nuances and Limits

• Ohio-specific figures. The specific rates (8.24%, 13.36%, etc.) reflect Ohio's particular tax base and revenue needs; they should not be generalized to other states.
• Does not model an LVT alternative — see above. This page should not be cited as evidence that LVT would avoid the income/sales-tax rate increases this paper documents; that comparison was never made in this paper.
• Full landing-page content read directly, independently confirmed (A-claim). The paper's working-paper page (not paywalled) was read directly and its key figures independently re-verified in a second pass.

Bears On

• Concept: Split-Rate Taxation — a cautionary quantification of the cost of abandoning the property tax base for income/consumption taxes instead of shifting it toward land.
• Research: NDSPN: Cincinnati LVT Analysis — the wiki's existing Ohio LVT simulation, a useful counterpoint this paper's income/sales-tax-only framing doesn't engage.
• Concept: Canons of Taxation — the distributional-divergence finding bears directly on tax-design tradeoffs between tax bases.

See Also

• Split-Rate Taxation
• NDSPN: Cincinnati LVT Analysis
• Canons of Taxation
• Land Value Tax

Sources

1. Jared Walczak (2026), "Replacing the Irreplaceable: Analyzing Revenue Alternatives for Ohio Property Taxes," Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Working Paper, 40 pp., published June 2026. lincolninst.edu — fetched and read directly 2026-08-30, figures independently re-verified in a second pass (not paywalled) — used for the $21.1bn revenue-at-stake figure, the 8.24%/10.29% flat income-tax figures, the 13.36%/14.53% sales-tax figures, the graduated-income-tax above-12%-top-rate finding, the distributional-divergence conclusion, and the confirmed absence of any land-value-tax alternative modeled in the paper (A-claim; full working-paper page read and independently re-confirmed).