Rep. Horner's plan to eliminate property taxes in Catoosa County has seven stages. One of them is on the ballot November 3rd. Here is the rest of it, and where it stops working.
The penny sales tax is step one of seven.
Steps 2 through 7 need a second referendum, two separate bills in the General Assembly, and a school board that isn't obligated to go along with any of it. None of that has happened. Most of it hasn't been written.
The first five steps mostly do what he says they will. We'll say so as we go. The plan breaks at six and seven.
If the FLOST measure passes by a simple majority, it creates a one percent sales tax for five years, starting January 1, 2027 (the intergovernmental agreement lists April 1, 2027; the resolution, ballot, and statute all point to January 1, which is what voters will see). Unlike Georgia's state sales tax, this local penny applies to groceries and to the first $3 of every gallon of gas.
This measure will be on the ballot this November. Everything after it is just an idea being presented by Rep. Horner. No bill language has been proposed, and the entire concept relies on the FLOST measure passing.
Collections begin January 1, 2027. Under Georgia law as amended this spring, sales tax the county receives before July 1 of a year reduces that same year's property taxes, and everything received on or after July 1 rolls into the next year (O.C.G.A. § 48-8-109.42(a), as rewritten by SB 33 of 2026; the rollback rate itself is set by § 48-8-109.42(b)(2)). So the first rollback, on the 2027 tax bill, is built from roughly the first half of 2027's collections. Everyone pays the extra penny on every purchase all year, including groceries and the first $3 of every gallon of gas, homesteads included. The first full-year rollback is 2028. His model sizes the 2027 county rollback on a full year's collections; the law only counts about half of one.
Once the rollback starts, his own model says about 65% of it goes to non-homestead property: rentals, commercial, industrial, out-of-county owners. That share settles at 61% once homesteads reach zero (step 5). That's even though he's told the public the relief is for "our constituents... not Walmart."
Two separate bills, and neither one is written yet. One would create a new local homestead exemption for the county and cities, the thing that takes them the rest of the way to zero for a homestead (step 5), on top of the uniform rate cut everyone already gets starting in step 2. The other, a completely separate bill, creates the school exemption. The school board is not obligated to participate in the second one. Neither the county-and-city piece nor the school piece has happened yet. Both still need this session to write the bills and the Nov 2027 vote (step 4) to pass them.
The five-year residency requirement, the thing his spreadsheet depends on to stay under the legal cap, is something he has talked about in public again and again, always as something that could be added, never as something locked in. It is not in any bill text anywhere, because neither bill has been filed yet, and no residency or tenure condition appears in HB 581, the county resolution, or the IGA either.
The exemptions need their own referendum. Georgia's constitution only lets a local homestead exemption take effect if the voters it covers approve it.
By then the penny has been coming out of every purchase since January. The county and city rollback on your 2027 tax bill was sized on less than six months of it. The first full-year rollback arrives in 2028. The separate school exemption is a different track entirely, and under his own recommended rollout it does not finish phasing in until four years after that, in 2031.
61% of every dollar of relief, fully implemented, still goes to property that isn't anyone's homestead: rentals, second homes, commercial, industrial, farms, and out-of-county owners.
This step is county and city tax only. County rates fall from 4.947 mills to 0.70. Ringgold 2.364 to 0.72. Fort Oglethorpe 3.589 to 0.71. Every property gets that cut, homes and businesses alike. It's the FLOST rollback from step 2. (Those starting rates are the 2024 basis the intergovernmental agreement uses, not this year's rates. His own model starts the county at 4.789, a rate nobody ever adopted, and Ringgold at 2.445, last year's rate. Same stale-basis problem, twice.)
What's new here, if the Nov 2027 vote (step 4) passes, is a homestead exemption on top of that cut. For a home, the county and city tax that's left goes to zero. School tax is a separate track with its own exemption, phased in through 2031. That's step 6, and it's where the plan breaks.
One sizing problem: the relief he's modeled adds up to about $1.9 million more than the penny brings in, because the rates were set against 2025 collections instead of the 2026 levy. That's a fixable error, not a fatal one, and the rates can be adjusted before anything is final.
The schools get nothing from the sales tax. State law doesn't allow a school district to receive FLOST money. So the school half of the HOME Plan contains no new revenue at all. It pays for the homeowner exemption by raising school millage on everyone who isn't a homestead: renters, landlords, farms and businesses.
To be fair, businesses and landlords do get something back. FLOST cuts their county and city millage rate before the school rate goes up, and on his own numbers they come out slightly ahead at first — his own sample commercial property example pays less in total tax every year from 2025 through 2031 under his plan than under the current path.
That offset doesn't hold up under four points, all from his own numbers:
1. The school millage increase is permanent. The FLOST county/city rollback is not — it runs five years, expires December 31, 2031, and renewing it takes a local Act of the Georgia General Assembly plus a countywide referendum, not just a vote. If a renewal ever fails, the school increase stays and the county/city relief vanishes.
2. Renters get no property tax relief at all, ever — they just pay the added penny of sales tax on groceries and the first $3 of every gallon of gas. That's a clean, undiluted transfer with no offset.
3. The offset itself is funded by a sales tax those same customers — the businesses' own shoppers — pay. It isn't free money.
4. His own workbooks disagree with each other about what non-homestead property ends up paying: one sheet leaves the non-homestead county rate at 0.70 mills, while his customer-facing Examples tab shows the commercial county bill going to essentially $0 by 2030.
And the school half only fits under Georgia's 20-mill legal cap because of the five-year rule and two assumptions that don't survive checking. Hold him to the 100% he advertises, correct those two assumptions using his own file and the county's records, and the plan needs more property tax than the law allows a school system to collect. The gap is about $12.9 million a year, once the exemption is fully phased in under his own recommended timeline (Option B). His own July 13 email revenue table shows the plan beating baseline revenue in three of four years shown — +$1.455 million in 2029, +$3.046 million in 2030, +$4.715 million in 2031 — the direct product of his spreadsheet growing the tax digest 3.89% a year while growing school costs only 3.5% a year.
Option B, a four-year phase-in, is his own recommended model — his Aug. 3 email says so in capitals, “RECOMMENDED MODEL.” The critique holds under it too: Option A needs about 25.50 mills once corrected, Option B about 25.19. Barely any difference.
He told the school board, in writing, four separate times, that the model is not a fiscal impact study, that assumptions should be verified before adoption, and that analysis should include conservative digest-growth assumptions, recession stress tests, and enrollment and state-funding scenarios. He wrote those caveats to the board. He dropped them from the public pitch.
Under his recommended path the school homestead exemption reaches 100% in 2031. The penny sales tax, five years from January 2027, expires at the end of 2031 and has to go back to voters.
By then the school millage is pinned near the legal ceiling with nothing left to raise, and the county and city exemptions have no revenue behind them unless the tax is renewed.
His plan document lists three conditions for the school exemption: a five-year residency clause, FLOST or LHOST staying in effect, and QBE (the state's school-funding formula) being fully funded.
The first one isn't optional. Take the five-year residency clause out of his spreadsheet and all three options in his plan need more school tax than Georgia allows. His numbers only work because it's there. Even Option C, which his comparison table says has “no automatic guardrails,” uses it in the spreadsheet.
But he doesn't treat any of them as a commitment. His comparison table calls them “proposed protections.” An email he sent, Aug. 3, 2026, says “The details, implementation schedule, and proposed guardrails remain open to negotiation and discussion with the Board.” None of the three is in any bill, because no bill has been written yet.
See what else he's told people two different ways →You’ve seen all seven steps. Want to get to know the other candidate for House District 3?
Meet Margaret Spear at spearforga.com →Method. Steps and dates are Rep. Horner's own, from his public presentations and the intergovernmental agreement. Figures come from his workbooks (obtained through open records), audited Catoosa County and school system budgets, and recordings of public meetings. Timestamps and cell references are given on each step.