TALLAHASSEE -- Amendment 5, the major constitutional ''tax swap'' on the November ballot that would replace school property taxes with other revenues, poses one of the biggest math problems the Florida Legislature will ever have to solve.

If the amendment passes, the numbers will be tough to work out, due to the Legislature's cloudy fiscal track record and some vague wording in the measure itself.

The amendment calls for the complete elimination of the state-set property tax for schools -- 25 percent of the average property-owner's tax bill. To replace the lost money, the amendment says, legislators would have to increase the sales tax by a penny, eliminate some sales-tax exemptions, levy new taxes or even cut the budget.

How much tax revenue will they have to replace? Maybe $9.3 billion. Maybe $11 billion. No one's quite sure. Though the amendment demands that the Legislature make up the lost education money, it's unclear how to figure the amount, according to state economists.

The final math will rest with the Legislature -- an institution almost universally opposed to the amendment along with virtually every heavy-hitting lobby group in the state.

''All of this would be completely unnecessary if the Legislature had just done its job,'' said John McKay, the former Senate president who successfully pushed the proposed amendment through the state Taxation and Budget Reform Commission earlier this year. He wants people to ignore opponents' ''fear'' mongering and focus on how the amendment will help improve the real-estate-based economy and reform the system to tax consumption rather than wealth.

''It's far more important to deal with knowns rather than unknowns,'' he said.

QUESTIONS

The unknowns, however, dominate, considering that the amendment calls for:

• A review of some special interest sales-tax exemptions, ranging from car trade-ins to charter-fishing boats to school textbooks and lunches to newspaper advertising. If all those exemptions were eliminated, the state would get an additional $4 billion a year. The amendment prohibits lawmakers from touching another $8 billion in sales-tax exemptions because they cover food, health services and aid for the poor.

• A one-cent increase to the six-cent sales tax. That would probably raise $4 billion in the budget year beginning in July 2010. But whether this will help or hurt the economy is hotly contested.

• More budget cuts. It's not clear how much is left to trim after lawmakers cut $6 billion over the past year, and more trims are likely to be needed as the economy continues to falter.

• Other unspecified tax increases. These could include legalizing more video-lottery gambling (nearly $1 billion a year), taxes on cigarettes or booze (more than $1 billion), making all corporations in the state pay taxes ($365 million), stocks-and-bonds taxes ($830 million) or up to $23 billion by imposing sales and use taxes on services ranging from haircuts to accounting to limousines.

• A five percent cap on the assessed value increases of non-homesteaded properties. Voters in January approved a first-ever cap of 10 percent. (Owners of primary homes already have a 3 percent yearly cap, known as Save Our Homes.)

CRIST'S STANCE

Raising any tax on a service or product will prove to be a tough slog in the Legislature, though everyone agrees that an income tax, prohibited in the Florida Constitution, won't be considered. Gov. Charlie Crist, who re-emphasized his support for Amendment 5 last week, said he wouldn't consider such a tax but won't say what options he favors.

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