{"id":437137,"date":"2026-09-16T00:00:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T00:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/437137\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T00:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T00:00:08","slug":"texas-lawmakers-discuss-ways-to-provide-property-tax-relief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/437137\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas lawmakers discuss ways to provide property tax relief"},"content":{"rendered":"

AUSTIN, Texas (KTRK) — More property tax relief for Texas homeowners could be on the way, but some lawmakers are worried about what it could mean for everyone else.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the House Ways and Means Committee discussed options for property tax relief for hours. One way would be to get rid of property taxes altogether.<\/p>\n

“It seems to me that if we were to eliminate anything, we would eliminate a property tax, using a sales tax and not the other way around,” State Rep. Cody Vasut (R-Angleton) said.<\/p>\n

If lawmakers turned to sales tax, the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association<\/a> found you could pay a lot more for other stuff. In order to make up for the loss in property taxes, the group discovered the sales tax rate would have to climb to nearly 20 percent.<\/p>\n

Right now, property taxes help pay for local government budgets and schools. For public education, TEA Commissioner Mike Morath told lawmakers during the hearing they rely on nearly $30 billion in property taxes.<\/p>\n

Another option lawmakers discussed was expanding the homestead exemption. The comptroller’s office<\/a> said the homestead exemption was $25,000 a decade ago.<\/p>\n

Right now, it’s $140,000. In 2025, lawmakers and voters approved increasing the amount that lowers the taxable value of your home, dropping the amount of school taxes you pay.<\/p>\n

It is a growing amount that lawmakers learned is helping thousands of Texans avoid paying school property taxes. During the hearing, lawmakers learned that about 1 in 10 homeowners under the age of 65 aren’t paying anything, while a third of homeowners 65 and older are free from school property taxes.<\/p>\n

It’s not just homeowners lawmakers are looking at. This upcoming session, they say they need to find ways to help renters too, who don’t pay property taxes.<\/p>\n

“There’s virtually no savings that’s passed onto tenants, which is why here in Texas we have an affordability crisis because we haven’t figured out how to much this property tax relief provide lower cost for that segment of the population,” State Rep. Vincent Perez (D-El Paso) said.<\/p>\n

Relief that’s still being worked out. Lawmakers said these meetings will help them work on legislation before starting a new session in January.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 KTRK-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas (KTRK) — More property tax relief for Texas homeowners could be on the way, but some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[151485,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-437137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-151485","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}