Replies

If I understand these:

Amend. 1 is for transferring wealth from old folks to younger homeowners - raise the general exemption, but reduce the old folks exemption.

Amendment 2 is a special retroactive provision to provide a benefit to a very small number of folks whose spouses died before the effective date of a prior amendment. Negligible financial impact.

Amendment 3 appears to be straightforward

Amendment 4 is a foot in the door to permit gambling at professional sporting events. Because, let’s face it - Jerry Jones needs the money.

Amendment 5 lets rich folks in rural counties use taxpayer money to maintain their internal ranch roads and driveways. Because they are entitled.

Amendment 6 was basically meaningless pandering to the sportsmen and women. Doesn’t really do anything.

Amendment 7, on the other hand, puts highway money back toward the highways instead of unrelated pet projects of corrupt politicians. But the trick language shows that it really to make sure sure that the bankers get their interest paid, after the voters were stupid enough to approve highway debt a few years ago.

Anything I missed?

Ammend 1

providing for a reduction of the limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for those purposes on the homestead of an elderly or disabled person to reflect the increased exemption amount

This is to give the elderly or disabled the SAME increased exemption.

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Ammend 5

Gives authority to County Government, not individuals or families.

The population limitation is necessary to prevent populous counties from competing with the private road construction industry. However, in the rural counties that would be covered by the proposed amendment, there are no private industries with which to compete, and counties should be allowed to deal with minor projects to maintain road safety.

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http://www.tlc.state.tx.us/pubsconamend/analyses15/analyses15.pdf

Anything I missed? - - - Eh, a couple things.

1 - including other posts, it looks to raise the amount of exemption everyone can claim, while lowering the max amount elderly/disabled can claim. This only should hit those that already max out exemptions for ad valorem taxes, so unless I misunderstand something, few people will see an overall reduction in exemptions. Most people (including elderly) will be able to increase their exemption as they are included in the 15-25k exemption increase.

2 - Yes, it was applicable to some recently dead veterans' spouses, this just expands that exemption to spouses of veterans who died before 2011.

3 - Yup.

4 - Yes, most likely.

5 - 100% wrong. Currently, any county that has <5,000 population can be involved in construct/maintain private roads, as long as they impose a reasonable charge for that work. This amendment simply raises the threshold to 7,500. Either way, it's not taxpayer dollars building the roads, the counties still have to charge for the work.

6 - Yea, part of the big anti-anti-2A push. Kinda pointless, really.

7 - I didn't know motor vehicle-related taxes weren't already earmarked for the SHF, but yep, just taking some random sales tax percentage for the SHF seems to imply that someone isn't quite spending their funding very well.