Georgia House and Senate Republicans with competing agendas managed to push through income and property tax cuts as the curtain closed on the 2026 Georgia legislation session after midnight Friday.

The Senate did not get its elimination of income taxes. The House did not get its elimination of property taxes.

But both taxes would become smaller if Gov. Brian Kemp signs the two bills into law.

Owing to the late hour, Senate Republicans had to repurpose a hemp farming bill to send a property tax cut to the House.

The measure would basically shift money from consumers’ right pocket to their left: the property taxes on their homes would be reduced by the income from a new penny sales tax.

The state House had had a similar idea, but it ran afoul of the state Constitution. A two-thirds vote was required for adoption, and Democrats opposed it, denying passage of House Bill 1116 in early March.

So the Senate came up with a legal workaround, devising 159 taxing districts superimposed over the boundaries of Georgia’s 159 counties.

Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, presented Senate Bill 33, formerly the hemp bill and now containing a mutation of HB 1116, on the Senate floor less than half an hour before midnight Thursday.

It passed despite firm opposition from Democrats, the minority party.

In the House, as the clock ticked toward 1 a.m., Rep. Shaw Blackmon, R-Bonaire, who’d been leading the charge on the House’s primary agenda of property tax reduction, acknowledged that the cut would pass by hitchhiking on a Senate bill.

He recounted a line from a favorite Marvel movie, involving the character Dr. Strange: “it’s not about you,” Blackmon said. “And we’re going to do what’s best for the taxpayer.”

Capitol Beat is a nonprofit news service operated by the Georgia Press Educational Foundation that provides coverage of state government to newspapers throughout Georgia. For more information visit capitol-beat.org.