Property Taxes

Local government in Texas runs primarily on property taxes, and government is subject to inflation like everyone else. Add in a region where property values climb every year, and the result is automatic: your tax burden skyrockets unless someone deliberately stops it.

I have a record of stopping it. Plano’s city property taxes on existing homeowners rose 40 percent in the five years from 2014 to 2019. I successfully championed the No-New-Revenue rate four years in a row, keeping city property taxes flat each year. Beginning in 2020, the Legislature capped how much local taxing authorities can raise taxes without voter approval — 3.5 percent per year for cities — but we didn’t wait for the state to make us. As one of my first acts in office, I voted to keep taxes flat for the first time in 24 years.

Get educated, because the language is designed to confuse you. Officials boast about lowering the tax rate while your actual burden goes up. The rate is a ratio. What matters is how many of your dollars end up with the tax man.

And when you ask, everyone points somewhere else. Cities point at school districts, which take more. School districts point at Robin Hood, which takes roughly a third of their revenue. Everyone points at the Appraisal District, whose job is to estimate your home’s market value — a process with real problems of its own.

The deeper issue is that the system itself is antiquated. The market value of your home has nothing to do with the cost of the government services you receive, and nothing to do with your ability to pay. Too many elected officials don’t actually understand how any of it works. That’s why I’m supporting the effort to eliminate the property tax statewide in the Texas Legislature — the structure is broken at the root, and it should be argued about honestly in Austin. You can hear me discuss it on the Information Edge podcast.

But that fight is in Austin, and this office is here. What a Commissioner controls is whether the county earns every dollar it takes.

I’ll drive maximum value from each of your tax dollars, as I did every year on Plano City Council. I’ll champion zero-base budgeting, so that every county expense has to justify itself annually rather than surviving on the momentum of last year’s budget. I’ll insist that bonds be issued only for what bonds are meant for — the long-term capitalization of long-lived assets like roads and facilities, never routine operating costs. And I’ll push to modernize the county website and its budget and expense reporting systems, so any resident can see where the money goes without filing a request or knowing whom to ask.

Every year after appraisals come out, my friend Scott Grigg, Collin County Tax Assessor-Collector, and I hold a free Property Tax 101 seminar. Join us next time, or watch the recorded webinars: How Property Taxes Work in Texas and How to Protest Your Appraisal.