quote:Could you tell me more about the 25% tax relief in Texas?
Prop taxes are high here because that's how we fund schools. Move to an expensive housing market like Austin and your taxes will be high. Move to a good housing market, say D/FW or San Antonio, and your taxes will still be high as a percentage but significantly lower than Austin.
Anyway, school funding in the state was declared unconstitutional so they had to come up with a different way to fund schools. Under the current system, poor districts couldn't raise enough money through property taxes to fund adequate education, so the state would take money from the non-poor districts, a plan called "Robin Hood" since it, in effect, stole from the rich and gave to the poor. Rich, BTW, is a relative term. Even not very well off districts like the city of Dallas had money taken from them. That gives you an idea of how poor the poor ones really are. (Think south Texas.)
To eliminate Robin Hood, we are now going to raise money with a new tax on business, not an income tax but one based on revenues. This will allow the state to fund the poor school districts adequately without taking from the non-poor districts. As part of this plan, real estate taxes will be rolled back by about one third. I'm guessing that this means they will really only be rolled back by 25%, but who's to say.
So, Emery, how old are you? Once you hit 65 your prop taxes are frozen.
Jeff
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