Perry trumped this tax on business as necessary to relieve homeowners of the burden of the school tax. As a homeowner in Texas, I can tell you that this tax is a serious burden. I’ve owned homes in two other states and Texas is much, MUCH higher. I believe that we were only second to Wisconsin for that. (On a $120,000 home in Arizona, we paid less than $600 in annual PT. The first year here, we paid more than $1200 for a $100,000 home. Five years later - last year - we paid more than $1800. I don’t remember the number this spring, but it actually went down. I don’t know how much of that was the tax break and how much was from the serious decline in property value.)
Older people and the disabled didn’t get much of a break either. (That’s my main issue.)
The gripe we had here was that the business tax passed, but we didn’t get our drop in property taxes. After a lot of screaming (and an election last year), we finally got some relief last spring.
The TX legislature put a cap on raising property taxes so they had to make up for the loss by taxing business. They’re going to get their $$ one way or the other it seems.