A bill that will reduce statewide property taxes for Texas homeowners by roughly $18 billion went into effect Jan. 1. The new law passed with 83% of the vote in November, according to the Texas Tribune.
“The measure raised the homestead exemption—the amount of money a homeowner can take off the value of their house (and primary residence) before it is taxed—from $40,000 to $100,000 per year,” a Newsweek article explained. “The bill does not impact the cost of a home, but just the tax rate. The measure also put an appraisal cap on residential and commercial properties and included a public school tax compression, reducing school districts’ maintenance and operations property tax rate by 10.7 cents per $100 of a property’s valuation.”
Gov. Abbott signed the measure into law on Dec. 27, posting on the social media platform X — formerly known as Twitter — that it made for the “largest property tax cut in Texas history,” and that he was “proud to sign this into law and to see Texas voters overwhelmingly approve it in the November elections.”
The measure “is aimed squarely at lowering school district property taxes, which make up the lion’s share of a Texas landowner’s property tax bill,” the Texas Tribune noted in November.
Average homeowners could see $2,500 in tax savings.
Texas does not have a state personal income tax, which may be one of the reasons why it maintains some of the highest property taxes in the country. According to Newsweek, only five states — New Jersey, Illinois, New Hampshire, Vermont and Connecticut — have higher property tax rates than Texas.
Average Texas homeowners should see a reduction in their annual property taxes, according to reporting by the Tribune based on data provided by a state senator.
“Together, those breaks — which will be applied to landowners’ 2023 tax bill — will amount to more than $2,500 in tax savings over the next two years for the typical Texas homeowner, with bigger savings for seniors, according to figures provided by the office of [Sen. Paul] Bettencourt, a Houston-area Republican and the Senate’s chief tax-cut proponent,” the Tribune reported. “That comes out to a little more than $100 a month.”
The new tax law wasn’t celebrated by everyone, as many Texans are still feeling the sting of rising home prices. Some homeowners took to social media to lambast Abbott, claiming anecdotally that their taxes increased as a result of the new measure.
“You may have given us a bigger deduction but it still didn’t cut taxes since our values were significantly increased [before] the increased homestead exemption,” wrote one user.
