From the Texas Tribune: Texas would need about $81.5 billion a year to end property taxes, officials say

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For our look at government finance.

Property taxes are the primary way that local governments in Texas fund their operations. This includes both ISD's and Community College districts. Since these bills can get pretty steep, there are ongoing attempts to limit them. Some would like to eliminate them. Doing require that local governments fidn other means to fund themselves.

This article explains how much.

Key Terms:
- property taxes
- state budget officials
- conservatives
- Republican lawmakers
- Texas Senate Finance Committee
- Legislative Budget Board
- School property taxes
- sales tax
- cities
- counties
- school districts
- special taxing districts
- maintenance and operations
- income tax

From the article's intro: 

Texas would have to spend tens of billions of dollars to get rid of the state’s property taxes, state budget officials said Wednesday — a reality check on some conservatives who want to end them once and for all.

Republican lawmakers have been on a yearslong push to bring down the state’s property taxes, among the highest in the nation. Some Texas conservatives have long dreamt of getting rid of at least some property taxes altogether — an idea others have criticized as unrealistic given the gargantuan cost of doing so. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a skeptic of doing away with property taxes, tasked lawmakers earlier this year with tallying the cost.

Now, lawmakers have those figures in hand. Getting rid of all property taxes collected by school districts would have cost the state $39.5 billion in tax year 2023, figures presented to the Texas Senate Finance Committee by the Legislative Budget Board show. School property taxes, which pay for costs like teacher salaries and new facilities, represent the largest chunk of a property owner’s tax bill.

In addition, the state would have had to shell out another $42 billion to cover the property taxes collected by cities, counties and special taxing districts last year. All told, the state would have had to spend $81.5 billion to completely eliminate all local property taxes. That’s more than half of the $144 billion that lawmakers allocated for Texas’ current two-year budget.