Gov. Abbott signs property tax reform bill

cbsaustin ^ | June 12, 2019 | staff

[bgill]

Tightening the leash on property taxes in Texas is now a reality. Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill into law Wednesday capping how much cities and counties can raise property taxes, and generally requires an automatic tax ratification election for cities, counties and some special districts... With the new law, the most cities can charge without an election now will be 3.5%, as opposed to the old limit of 8%.

[bgill]

Wait just a minute. Is that 8% a typo or stupid journalist doesn't know there's a world outside of Austin? The limit has been 10% for decades. Ours goes up 10% each and every year.

What company do y'all use around Austin to fight your tax? I can't find anyone to do it. They laugh you off here if you try to do it yourself.

[Undecided 2012]

mine too 10% every year

[o-n-money]

This year my town kept the tax rate even. They just raised the assessment on my house 20,000. It’s called pissing on your leg and saying it’s raining.

[marktwain]

It appears to me the 3.5% is the amount of the property value that can be charged as tax each year, not the amount the tax can be increased.

That is still a very high property tax of $3,500 on each $100,000 of property value.

[bgill]

That’s the problem, they can raise your appraised market value to whatever ridiculously high amount they wish. They’ve done it to me.

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks so much for your support to this point... I personally apprecaite it...
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Just $723.00 dollars to 98.00%

[Sequoyah101]

Ah, Texas property taxes. What a wonderful deal. NO state income tax though. Wonderful arrangement. AS long as you are working you can pay your property tax. Not working? Well, hope you can sell your house soon.

In the 21 years I owned the last house in Texas the taxes went up 300%. I thought I was lucky. Fought the appraisal almost every year. Taxes got up to only about $12,000 a year. People in master planned communities down in the Houston proper area paid even more. Can you imagine not having a job or income and getting a tax bill like this?

I don’t like income tax, especially when I’m retired but I really hate fighting property taxes in Texas. To be on the appraisal board you have to give up your soul and lose your mind apparently. Taxes know no boundaries. Any kind of taxes.

[vette6387]

“Wait just a minute. Is that 8% a typo or stupid journalist doesn't know there's a world outside of Austin? The limit has been 10% for decades. Ours goes up 10% each and every year.
What company do y'all use around Austin to fight your tax? I can't find anyone to do it. They laugh you off here if you try to do it yourself.”

And you Texans say that you're “FREE?” And many of you disparage the problems we have here in California. Why don't you pass a state initiative? Oh, I forgot, Texas is one of the states that doesn't allow it's citizens to pass change by Initiative and Referendum! Here in CA, thanks to decades old PROPOSITION 13, our property taxes ( starting out in 1983 when we moved into our new home) were assessed at 1% of the value of the property ( somewhere in the neighborhood of $3,500. per year). Now, some 36 years later, our taxes have risen no more than 2% per year (now around $7,500. per year, even though the home is now valued at about $2.5 million)! The current RAT "leadership" is bat$hit crazy to try and change it, but it can only be changed by another vote of the people! There are a ton of problems here in CA today, but thankfully for us folks in retirement, property taxes aren't one of them!

[TribalPrincess2U]

Yes and they do!

[FoxInSocks]

Oh, I forgot, Texas is one of the states that doesn't allow it's citizens to pass change by Initiative and Referendum!

And then a court overturns the passed proposition and it was all a waste of time. E.g., Propositions 187 and 8.

[WildHighlander57]

See freepmail.

[vette6387]

“And then a court overturns the passed proposition and it was all a waste of time. E.g., Propositions 187 and 8.”

Yes, some of that has happened, but the vast majority of initiatives here are not subjected to the courts. And insofar as property taxes are concerned, Prop 13 has been in force since before the days of Ronald Reagan here, and as a consequence, our people get to stay in their homes in retirement and it has also fostered a vibrant RE market. The initiative process has been instrumental in reining in our government for all of my 79 years here.
I worked with a guy here in CA who was a PhD. He decided to move to Austin to work for a company to whom ours was a subcontractor. He build a very big house on one of the hills above Austin. The were there for seven years, when his wife said that she had had enough of Texas ( being shunned by their neighbors because they were not “native Texans” was her chief complaint), and she was heading back to CA with or without him. He got a job as a VP of an emerging technology company, but unfortunately for him, housing values had been pretty much stagnant in Austin, and he ended up having to buy a Silicon Valley tract home with the proceeds of the sale of his home in Texas. Thankfully for him, when he finally retired, even his tract home had increased in value, and he was able to sell out for $1.5 million. But, if he had stayed in his original CA home, he would have been able to sell for at least $1 million more!

[Bommer]

Yeah your right. Too bad no one wants to buy those lovely houses you have in CA. Was looking for something with nice schools and no Colera or Black Plague, and one with a 5 month green plastic roof, but out of my price range.

[vette6387]

“Yeah your right. Too bad no one wants to buy those lovely houses you have in CA.”

See you have no idea about what you’re saying. Where we live, there are no homeless encampments, and housing sales are booming. And the vast majority of California ISN’T the $hit hole that is portrayed on TV. California isn’t the socialist monolith that you think it is. Stay where you are, we will both be better off if you do.

[Magnum44]

Vette, we have discussed this before. You enjoy a good retirement in one of the prime locations in CA because you bought in decades ago. You are lucky, but you represent a (literally) dying demographic in that state. You say the bad parts are limited, but pretty much anything west and south of the western slope of the sierras is little Mexico now (in other words, a $hit hole). Young people can’t afford what you could afford or currently have, so they (mostly h1b’s) crowd into limited apartments by the dozens and work for tech companies that are essentially the modern versions of sweat shops. Sure, they get all natural food, but they can’t afford a healthy family lifestyle, and I don’t mean lack of play time, I mean a single family home in a nice neighborhood with kids and a parent at home with time to raise them. You see things from your farm. 98% of Californians are stuck in population centers with sidewalks covered in feces.

[vette6387]

“You say the bad parts are limited, but pretty much anything west and south of the western slope of the sierras is little Mexico now”

That is an overblown statement, but you are correct about how the coming generations here are going to live. And FWIW, if it weren’t for family and close friends, we would most likely leave for Nevada, where we recently bought a home as an investment. But the problem is that Nevada will become a California in a few years too. I mean you’re right, at my age, not much of what’s happening will materially affect us. But we are still left with what we will leave behind. With the burgeoning RAT-run, RAT-infested population centers, coupled with”one man, one vote,” eventually, all states wills succumb to being a “California.” And the more sparsely populated states (like Nevada) will go more quickly. Already Northern Nevada Counties are disturbed by that fact that now that Clark County (Las Vegas) has more than 50% of the state’s population, they will out vote the rural areas and effectuate their change on everyone. Everyone talks about illegals in California. Las Vegas is fast becoming Mexico City with the influx from Mexico and points south.
And the real shame is that Republicans, and their monied overseers, see America not as a country, but as a “market.” Not a place with borders, language and culture, but a conglomeration of “consumers” whose pockets they are intent upon picking.

[vette6387]

“I don’t like income tax, especially when I’m retired but I really hate fighting property taxes in Texas. To be on the appraisal board you have to give up your soul and lose your mind apparently. Taxes know no boundaries. Any kind of taxes.”

But you can avoid income taxes if you don’t have any income. Property taxes are there to be paid, whether or not you have the income to pay them or not. The biggest problem with Property Taxes is that they’ve been enlisted to pay for schools. Schools are NOT property-related services. but they are the majority of what we pay.

[Bommer]

Oh I’m sorry. I thought it was your state that fixed the open deficating problem by creating a new app on how not to step in it? And fixed the homeless issue by having them sleep in the street like a 3rd world country. I apologize. I forgot what a paradise your little world is....which is why you are bleeding out taxpayers and taking in all the 3rd and 4th shit...but you will fix that with an app on how to avoid that I’m sure. Adam Schift? Nancy Pelosi? Maxine Waters? Eric Swillwell? And Galvin Newsom running the rest of the state. Your state is a national joke. But as long as your neighborhood is nice, who cares. “ Hey were being eaten alive by cancer, but look at the cool tattoo I’ve got!”

[bgill]

$12k is about average here, too. We paid 2 weeks of income to taxes 25 years ago but today they’re killing us with 4 months of income.