Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) policy director James Quintero is doing all he can to stem the state’s rising tax tide.
"It’s not a stretch to say that property taxes are out of control in the Lone Star State,” Quintero wrote in a recent newsletter addressing the issue. “As a result, local governments are getting rich while families are forced to make hard decisions."
Rising property tax rates have become a growing concern among state lawmakers from all walks, causing them to join forces to lend bipartisan support to lessen the strain on local taxpayers.
Even before a TPPF report focusing on data from 2016-2020 showed how wildly increases have swung upward this year, a bipartisan campaign was underway with a goal of lessening the property tax load now strapped to the backs of many taxpayers.
Published in February, the report also detailed how property tax increases for the state’s largest school districts compared to the tax's preferred growth rate, which is a combination of inflation plus population growth, was on the rise.
In addition to property taxes already being “the largest tax assessed in Texas,” rates in almost all independent school districts (ISD) have recently rose faster than the preferred rate of growth, with Katy ISD and Conroe ISD being the only two school districts that kept their property tax growth rate below the preferred rate of growth.
At Austin, ISD's property tax grew 33.4% from $1.2 billion to $1.6 billion from 2016 to 2020, as the combined population and inflation for the city grew by 4.6% over that time, resulting in a difference of 28.9%.
"If left unchallenged, these value increases have the potential to really take a bite out of taxpayers over the long-haul,” Quintero said. “Taxpayers should be prepared to defend their wallets this year—first by protesting their property tax appraisals and then by pressuring their local elected officials to adopt lower tax rates.”
Data also shows property tax rates in all 10 most populous cities and counties outstripped this preferred rate over the period 2016-2020.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation's "Just the Facts: Property Taxes in Texas’ Most Populous Cities, Counties and School Districts" report further details that property taxes are “the largest tax assessed in Texas.” As recently as in 2019, nearly 50% of all tax dollars collected in the state came from property taxes, with as many 4,256 separate property taxing units in Texas in the fiscal year of 2019, some of which overlap.
The Balance pegged the state among top 10 for highest property tax rates in the country with a median payment of $4,065 per year and the Tax Foundation found that the state had the sixth highest property tax rate measured as property taxes paid as a percentage of owner occupied housing value in 2019.
Back in 2019, the Texas legislature passed House Bill 3, which made sweeping changes to the school finance system, among them establishing that school districts conduct efficiency audits “before a district seeks voter approval for increasing tax rates.”
An efficiency audit is defined as “an investigation of the operations of a school district to examine fiscal management, efficiency and utilization of resources.”