Photo: Moment RF
Both the Texas House and the Texas Senate have released their proposals for Texas' next budget, so what does it do to lower your property taxes? According to the current proposals, not that much.
As it stands right now, just $6.5 billion out of Texas' nearly $24 billion budget surplus would go towards creating new property tax relief.
Andrew McVeigh with Texans for Fiscal Responsibility says that the legislature can do better. He said, "It's not nearly enough of the relief that Texas families and businesses need. The relief that they provided last session wasn't nearly enough."
He says that instead of just $6.5 billion, the legislature should take the entire $23.7 billion budget surplus and use it to "compress" tax rates. He says that "Compressing rates provides relief across the entire economy for all property owners. So business owners and renters see the relief as well."
McVeigh said that would go a lot farther than just making the homestead exemption bigger because, as appraisals and inflation continue to rise, the value of the homestead exemption falls. McVeigh says compressing rates and imposing spending limits on local governments would help fix that.