Attempts to limit property tax increases continue to be on the agenda of the Texas Legislature. The author of the following article points out that attempts to do so have failed in the past, and might continue to.
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Restrain, reform, rein in, restrict and limit are not synonyms for the word Texas property taxpayers crave: cut.
This is an alert: Your property taxes will not be falling, in spite of all the talk about easing property taxes that is emanating from the Texas Capitol.
State lawmakers can’t make property tax rates come down. They’ve tried. It didn’t make rates come down. And even trying is expensive: It would cost the state just under $2.5 billion to replace a dime’s worth of local school property taxes; that is, to lower the property tax rate by ten cents. On a $250,000 home, that would amount to overall savings of about $20 per month in property taxes.
But the state of Texas doesn’t levy property taxes — that’s the job of local governments. And it has proved to be impossible for state lawmakers to lower taxes they don’t control.
They can try to create conditions that could lower property taxes, increasing the state’s share of the costs of big programs like public education, public health, criminal justice and mental health. But because they don’t control either the appraisals of real estate or the tax rates imposed on those properties, Texas state lawmakers cannot guarantee a cut in your property taxes.
They hear a lot about it in town hall meetings and campaign visits, though, so you can’t blame them for trying.
The best recent example was in 2006, when then-Gov. Rick Perry and the Legislature embarked on an ambitious rebalancing of public school finance that included what was supposed to be a swap that raised state taxes on corporations in return for lower local school property taxes.
The swap amounted to a $7 billion reduction in what Texans would have paid without it, the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, a business trade group, said at the time. But taxes didn’t drop. And Perry’s explicit promise that the average homeowner would save $2,000 came back to bite him during the 2006 race for governor.
Article 8 of the Texas Constitution concerns taxes and revenue collection. It establishes the basic relationship between the state and local governments regarding revenue, it is also exceedingly complex. In 2306, we will do what we can to make sense of it.
- Texas Constitution, Article 8.
