09/14/2026
John Kalish
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Now let's take a look at the State of Florida as a whole with ad valorem property tax collections 2019 and 2025...
The Florida Department of Revenue's statewide property-tax profile shows that Florida's 67 counties levied $10,683,652,381 in county ad valorem taxes in 2019. The statewide collection rate reported for that period was 99.25%.
For 2025, county ad valorem taxes statewide were $20,682,076,778. The DOR profile reports a statewide tax collection rate of 97.19%.
That means the county tax levy nearly doubled:
$20.682 billion − $10.684 billion = $9.998 billion increase
or approximately 93.6%.
Applying the DOR collection percentages gives an approximate collected amount of $10.604 billion in 2019 and $20.101 billion in 2025. Because the DOR's primary statewide figure is the amount levied, I would use the 93.6% levy increase as the cleanest comparison.
2. Florida population growth
The U.S. Census Bureau estimated Florida's population at 21,477,737 on July 1, 2019.
The Census Bureau's 2025 estimate is 23,462,518.
So Florida added:
23,462,518 − 21,477,737 = 1,984,781 people
That is approximately 9.24% population growth.
3. Inflation
Using the CPI-U annual averages from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, cumulative inflation between 2019 and 2025 was approximately 25.9%.
So a dollar of 2019 purchasing power would require roughly $1.26 in 2025 to buy the same general basket of goods and services.
4. The comparison
The contrast is substantial:
Florida county property-tax levy: +93.6%
Florida population: +9.2%
Inflation: +25.9%
County property-tax levies therefore increased by roughly 3.6 times the rate of inflation and more than 10 times the percentage growth in Florida's population.
Another useful measure is the county tax levy per Florida resident. In 2019, it was about $497 per resident. By 2025, it was about $881 per resident—an increase of approximately 77.2% per person.
There is an even broader number worth noting. If you include county, school board, municipal and other ad valorem taxing authorities, total Florida ad valorem taxes increased from $33.886 billion in 2019 to $59.169 billion in 2025—an increase of approximately $25.284 billion, or 74.6%.
That broader 74.6% statewide property-tax increase is still nearly three times cumulative inflation and about eight times Florida's population growth overall.
So again, I ask...if it wasn't population growth...and it wasn't inflation...where did all of these billions of dollars go? Assuming that local government is charged with providing core services, the math just doesn't math! Vote YES on Amendment 3 on November 3rd!
