Texas officials call it “property tax relief” — but legislation won’t lower tax bills or decrease budgets

In Texas, property taxes keep local governments like cities, counties and school districts operating and pay for everything from police officers’ salaries to city street repairs and classroom textbooks.

But in recent years, Texans have complained about rapidly rising property tax bills, and state lawmakers have vowed to slow such increases — even though state officials don’t set local tax rates.

Because school district taxes make up about half of tax bills, lawmakers this year have vowed to pour a lot more money into public education after years of lowering the state’s share of school costs (which forced school districts to make up the difference with tax hikes).

Legislators are also eyeing major changes to how local governments other than school districts set their tax rates.

Senate Bill 2 and House Bill 2 — both dubbed the Texas Property Tax Reform and Relief Act of 2019 — won’t provide across-the-board cuts to property tax bills. Instead, the bills would limit the amount of revenue that local governments like cities, counties and special districts can collect without voter approval.

When those local governments set their tax rates for the year, they do some basic math and look at how much money they collected the previous year and whether the same properties they’re taxing saw any changes to their appraised values. To help Texans understand how that math works, the example below shows how a hypothetical city calculates the tax rate that determines how much its residents will pay in property taxes.

Read more in this series:

• How do Texas governments calculate your property taxes? Here’s a primer.
• Coming Friday: A look at how estimated property taxes changed for four Texas properties