Howdy Ags,
It's apparent through out several of the local and general forums, people are upset about property taxes. We are all rightfully angry about property taxes. The steady yearly increases on the unrealized gains of our homes is the Cherry on top of the Pain Sundae with the current inflation and economic environment. The common joke from personal finance CPAs/Accountants is "Congratulations! The Government thinks your rich!"
But this year it's outrageous with most people seeing a 30% increase in their home's value across the boards....
There are currently a few Constitutional Amendments on the ballot for voting this spring. If confirmed, they would be beneficial to all types of personal property owners in Texas.
Proposition 1: This is related to those homeowners 65 years or old with their property taxes frozen. When lawmakers in 2019 passed legislation to offset rising property values with lower school district tax rates for all homeowners, those adjustments did not account for elderly and disabled homeowners whose property taxes were already frozen. So this proposition would lower those homeowners' property taxes further, but would not eliminate their property tax cap. The frozen value unfreezes and then refreezes lower each year.
Link to the Texas Tribune explaining the propositions - https://www.texastribune.org/2022/04/27/texas-proposition-1-2-constitutional-amendment-election/
Early Voting Ends Today and General Voting is on the 7th of May (this Saturday) - Please make sure you go vote, it helps all Texans! Besides who actually likes paying more taxes?!
Other Proposed Changes on the Horizon:
What can you do?
Please vote in this upcoming election!
It's apparent through out several of the local and general forums, people are upset about property taxes. We are all rightfully angry about property taxes. The steady yearly increases on the unrealized gains of our homes is the Cherry on top of the Pain Sundae with the current inflation and economic environment. The common joke from personal finance CPAs/Accountants is "Congratulations! The Government thinks your rich!"
But this year it's outrageous with most people seeing a 30% increase in their home's value across the boards....
There are currently a few Constitutional Amendments on the ballot for voting this spring. If confirmed, they would be beneficial to all types of personal property owners in Texas.
Proposition 1: This is related to those homeowners 65 years or old with their property taxes frozen. When lawmakers in 2019 passed legislation to offset rising property values with lower school district tax rates for all homeowners, those adjustments did not account for elderly and disabled homeowners whose property taxes were already frozen. So this proposition would lower those homeowners' property taxes further, but would not eliminate their property tax cap. The frozen value unfreezes and then refreezes lower each year.
- This might help keep older Texans stay retired in Texas instead of other tax friendlier states.
- My thoughts are this is a nice jester, but it doesn't do much for those of us living in cities where we've seen annual increases in the thousands.
Link to the Texas Tribune explaining the propositions - https://www.texastribune.org/2022/04/27/texas-proposition-1-2-constitutional-amendment-election/
Early Voting Ends Today and General Voting is on the 7th of May (this Saturday) - Please make sure you go vote, it helps all Texans! Besides who actually likes paying more taxes?!
Other Proposed Changes on the Horizon:
- Reducing or eliminating the Local ISD's cost burden from the assessed milage rates. Most Texan's see a milage rate around $2.00 per $100 of assessed value. There is talks of the state of Texas increasing the budget it spends on education because of the State's Permanent School Fund's increased revenues to remove this from your tax bill. While this has a long shot, this would reduce a significant amount of your property taxes in the thousands. An example in my case - it would reduce my taxes by $1.44 per $100 of assessed value.
What can you do?
- Continue to hammer your elected officials on property tax reforms. Gov Abbott said he is making it a top priority, well we should continue to voice our concerns to see if we can make that a reality faster.
- File for your Homestead Exemption - it will be backdated and helps limit your actual taxes paid from increasing more than 10% Year over Year.
Please vote in this upcoming election!
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