Will The Texas GOP EVER Address Property Taxes?

[DonTheCon2024]

That time of the year again boys.. write a massive year-end check for a home you “own” until the day you die.. 

 

Is this on anyones radar or does anyone even care anymore? I never see the GOP do anything meaningful about it. And I can’t count on Democrats as they elect dumdums like Beto who will never get elected 

 

[TxFan]

Na man they'll never do anything other than make it a campaign promise

Work your ### off your whole life to pay off something you'll never own, God forbid you get ill with no savings!  they'll sale your place with the belongings in it

I agree D's don't give themselves a chance when they elect folks who want to take your gun etc, although I do see TX flipping purple or blue with all the ppl in Austin,Dallas,Houston those areas are developing at record paces... 

 

[CardinalBacker]

I guess the question is, once they eliminate property taxes, how do you expect them to get their $3k-5K from you every year? Because those bills aren't going to pay themselves.  

Your property taxes don't make it to the state-they're collected and spent in your local community by your city, county, ISD (the largest one), Water districts, etc.... If you want meaningful change, elect local officials that will curtail spending.  That's gonna mean sacrificing things like turf and video scoreboards, etc.  Everybody wants lower taxes, but they also want all of the "things," too.  

That's what I find the funniest.  Poor people saying "we need a consumption tax." In fact, the only people who would benefit are large landowners like Parkdale Mall, timber companies, etc... their bill goes away.  Yours will just be swapped for a different kind of tax. 

Besides all of that, the consumption tax won't be collected locally.  Your dollars will be collected and sent to Austin, and hopefully they'll give some back to you to spend in ways that they see fit.  Good luck with that.  

[Reagan]

1 hour ago, DonTheCon2024 said:

That time of the year again boys.. write a massive year-end check for a home you “own” until the day you die.. 

 

Is this on anyones radar or does anyone even care anymore? I never see the GOP do anything meaningful about it. And I can’t count on Democrats as they elect dumdums like Beto who will never get elected 

 

Interesting proposition.  To be honest, I really haven't looked into how much authority the State House and Senate in Texas has over local property taxes.  Now, with that being said, in Jefferson county the joke, but probably true, was that one year taxes are raised and the next year property evaluations are raised.  Each serves to soak property owners.  Of course, arbitrarily raising evaluations gives cover to the politicos when their constituents start to question their tax bills.  They can say, oh, it's not us, we didn't raise your taxes.  And technically they are right.  Politicians raising taxes is transparent.  Arbitrarily raising evaluations by unelected people is not transparent!

So, if you have any info on the authority of the State House and Senate to intervene in the local property taxes then let us know.  Thanks!

[DonTheCon2024]

39 minutes ago, CardinalBacker said:

I guess the question is, once they eliminate property taxes, how do you expect them to get their $3k-5K from you every year? Because those bills aren't going to pay themselves.  

Your property taxes don't make it to the state-they're collected and spent in your local community by your city, county, ISD (the largest one), Water districts, etc.... If you want meaningful change, elect local officials that will curtail spending.  That's gonna mean sacrificing things like turf and video scoreboards, etc.  Everybody wants lower taxes, but they also want all of the "things," too.  

That's what I find the funniest.  Poor people saying "we need a consumption tax." In fact, the only people who would benefit are large landowners like Parkdale Mall, timber companies, etc... their bill goes away.  Yours will just be swapped for a different kind of tax. 

Besides all of that, the consumption tax won't be collected locally.  Your dollars will be collected and sent to Austin, and hopefully they'll give some back to you to spend in ways that they see fit.  Good luck with that.  

Well thanks to robinhood, my prop taxes are mostly shipped everywhere else except my local ISD (yay)

Sales tax, consumption tax, etc are inherently  regressive in that lower income people probably pay more compared to their total income while it’s relative chump change to higher income

Currently I come out ahead in the prop tax vs. state income tax debate but people who are retired now are getting the shaft (I understand there are certain exemptions). Now I’m not saying I currently support income tax over prop tax as that would be an even bigger check compared to my prop taxes, but when I retire I absolutely would support that as my income (and property taxes, theoretically) would be significantly lower. But big slippery slope on income tax.. don’t trust these people to find even more ways to milk us for everything we have. 
 

I don’t have a perfect solution but I’m open to ideas and I don’t think GOP (the ruling team) has really provided any. This issue only gets worse as California tech bros and Elon Musk worshippers keep flooding into our state and driving up housing for locals. Without homestead exemption I’d be really screwed

[CardinalBacker]

52 minutes ago, DonTheCon2024 said:

Well thanks to robinhood, my prop taxes are mostly shipped everywhere else except my local ISD (yay)

Sales tax, consumption tax, etc are inherently  regressive in that lower income people probably pay more compared to their total income while it’s relative chump change to higher income

Currently I come out ahead in the prop tax vs. state income tax debate but people who are retired now are getting the shaft (I understand there are certain exemptions). Now I’m not saying I currently support income tax over prop tax as that would be an even bigger check compared to my prop taxes, but when I retire I absolutely would support that as my income (and property taxes, theoretically) would be significantly lower. But big slippery slope on income tax.. don’t trust these people to find even more ways to milk us for everything we have. 
 

I don’t have a perfect solution but I’m open to ideas and I don’t think GOP (the ruling team) has really provided any. This issue only gets worse as California tech bros and Elon Musk worshippers keep flooding into our state and driving up housing for locals. Without homestead exemption I’d be really screwed

One of the bigger problems that I've seen is that they need approval to start "phasing in" the teeny, tiny consumption tax until they get around to eliminating the property tax. and we all know that the first would happen, but they'd forget about the second.  Then the consumption tax would skyrocket, too.

[CardinalBacker]

55 minutes ago, Reagan said:

Interesting proposition.  To be honest, I really haven't looked into how much authority the State House and Senate in Texas has over local property taxes.  Now, with that being said, in Jefferson county the joke, but probably true, was that one year taxes are raised and the next year property evaluations are raised.  Each serves to soak property owners.  Of course, arbitrarily raising evaluations gives cover to the politicos when their constituents start to question their tax bills.  They can say, oh, it's not us, we didn't raise your taxes.  And technically they are right.  Politicians raising taxes is transparent.  Arbitrarily raising evaluations by unelected people is not transparent!

So, if you have any info on the authority of the State House and Senate to intervene in the local property taxes then let us know.  Thanks!

They "addressed" it with SB2 a couple of years ago.  It limited the growth of new tax revenue by cities/counties to 3.5% per year (with exceptions), but did nothing about the biggest offender-ISDs.  FWIW, the local governments have just rocked on and ignored the 3.5% rule in a lot of places because nobody was complaining- those governments seem to like the old rule where a mere 8% increase in total revenue every year without requiring voter approval is okay.  SB2 allows a jump to 8% if there's a disaster.  So basically they claim that Hurricane Laura and the Pandemic were both "disasters" and therefore allowed them to raise taxes beyond 3.5%.

 

In a nutshell, local taxes are based on a tax rate adopted by the taxing units multiplied by the appraised values set by the Appraisal District.  When tax rates are being considered for the coming year, the entities calculate what rate it would take to raise the same amount of money as last year using the new, higher values.  Imagine that your total value of all of the property in your county was worth a billion dollars last year.... and the county needed 2 million dollars to operate.   Last year's tax rate would have been .002

 

This year, the certified value of all of the properties in the area were raised to 1.2 billion (a 20% increase in value).  The local government would only need a tax rate of  .001666 to raise the same 2 million dollars that they raised last year.  The legislature allows them to increase revenue by no more than 3.5% without an election.... that 3.5% increase would yield a rate of .001725 to raise $2,070,000,000.  Basically speaking, if values go up, rates will have to go down.... but the most people don't understand the math. 

I've watched local politicians with the above scenario adopt a rate of .00199 (a much higher increase in tax revenue than allowed by law), then proudly crow "we cut your taxes" because the RATE is lower than last years.... and people clapped like seals.  Meanwhile their raising much more than just 3.5% as allowed.  It happens everywhere.  

[CardinalBacker]

That was pretty involved.. I'll use this example instead.  The maximum allowed rate for some Fire Districts are allowed to tax up to $.10/per $100.  That's the absolute highest rate that they can adopt.  They're also limited to how much they can increase their total revenue (3.5%, max, w/o voter approval).  Numerous ESD just keep adopting "10 cents, because our rate has always been ten cents." If property values go up by 20% but the rate stays at .10, your taxes also go up by 20 percent, not the 3.5% cap as per the legislature.  But the taxpayers have a mechanism to fight, but somebody has to do it.  

[Unwoke]

Probably not, That’s the cost of not having a State Tax. They’re going to get their money from somewhere. Although I think property taxes in Texas are a bit high I don’t see them being lowered. 
 

It is a shame that after you pay your house off, you have to rent it from the State and County the rest of your life. Smh

[CardinalBacker]

5 hours ago, Unwoke said:

Probably not, That’s the cost of not having a State Tax. They’re going to get their money from somewhere. Although I think property taxes in Texas are a bit high I don’t see them being lowered. 
 

It is a shame that after you pay your house off, you have to rent it from the State and County the rest of your life. Smh

That’s the problem we’ve got now. The bills are so large that small percentage increases are actually big dollar amounts. It’s affecting peoples’ retirement plans. 
 

I know a young family that just bought in port Neches and their monthly tax bill comes out to $800/month on a $400k house.  That’s before principal, interest, or insurance. $800/ month with 355 more payments to go, and they should expect that tax bill to double at least twice (to $3200/month) before the mortgage pays off. 
 

My $1500 tax bill 15 years ago is a $3k dollar bill now, but thanks to compounding of tax rates, you can expect that $3k bill to double in 15 more years to $6k. 

[Unwoke]

6 minutes ago, CardinalBacker said:

That’s the problem we’ve got now. The bills are so large that small percentage increases are actually big dollar amounts. It’s affecting peoples’ retirement plans. 
 

I know a young family that just bought in port Neches and their monthly tax bill comes out to $800/month on a $400k house.  That’s before principal, interest, or insurance. $800/ month with 355 more payments to go, and they should expect that tax bill to double at least twice (to $3200/month) before the mortgage pays off. 
 

My $1500 tax bill 15 years ago is a $3k dollar bill now, but thanks to compounding of tax rates, you can expect that $3k bill to double in 15 more years to $6k. 

I know we don’t agree a lot politically but I agree with you when it comes to this issue. It’s gotten ridiculous. You have retired people on fixed incomes being taxed right out of their homes. It’s a sad situation for many. 
 

I have heard of elderly people doing reverse mortgages just to be able to stay in their homes longer.