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Liberty wrote: ↑Sun Jul 28, 2019 1:02 pm

philip964 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 28, 2019 12:36 pm https://www.click2houston.com/news/by-t ... erty-taxes

Texas ranked 5th highest for dependence on Property Taxes to raise revenue.

True, but when you don't have an income tax, the only way to decrease the dependence on property tax is to decrease spending.

There are other ways to reduce the dependence on property taxes, but they all involve raising some other tax. As in your example, we could have an income tax, but we could also raise the sales tax or the severance tax (tax on taking oil out of the ground). The only reasonable way to compare states for taxation is to compare the overall tax burden on everyone for the state and all subordinate local governments. I think (and do not recall exactly) that Texas actually comes out pretty good on overall tax burden.

talltex wrote: ↑Thu Apr 11, 2019 10:57 pmYou can go to your County's Appraisal District website and pull up several residential, commercial and agriculture properties and see what the differences in each of those rates is in your County.

Just for technical accuracy, you will see the tax rates for each taxing unit. All property is taxed at the same rate by any single taxing unit though, not different rates for different types of properties. For example, if the ISD has a tax rate of 1.04, all property is taxed at the same rate of 1.04 per $100 valuation.

All property is supposed to be appraised at its market value, except for certain specific properties (ag land, private airports, private parks, some inventory like cars or boats). Each of these has an appraised value at market value and an assessed value based on the various rules for that. Ag land is properly assessed based on its average net per acre profit for the type of land (and incidentally this is called ag valuation not ag exemption. The term exemption can irritate those who work in this area).

You can see a vast difference in how closely to market value various types of properties are appraised. This is because it is easier to get the market value of some types of property than others. For example, single family homes are sold so much and the prices are all reported to the MLS by the realtors that almost anyone can look at them and know what the real market value of a house is. Businesses are almost never sold through a MLS and rarely report their real sale price, so it is harder to know true market value.

But Talltex is right that very few people ever bother to appeal their valuation. The two types of appeals you can file are the actual valuation (your house has some characteristic which makes it worth less than what they have it appraised at) and equitable appraising (are all properties in the area appraised at the same percentage of market value). The true value in lowering your appraisal is not just in one year, but it is not allowed to be increased the next year without "clear and convincing" evidence. It also lowers it for a lot of following years when they do a mass appraisal and just say they will increase values by x percent.

jason812 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 10, 2019 6:41 pmI bet a 1% increase in sales taxes could eliminate property taxes.

Not by a long shot. Property taxes amount to more than 50% of all taxes collected in Texas at all levels. Check the amount of taxes collected by source listed on page 1 of this report from the state Comptroller. You might find some other interesting facts about taxes in Texas in this report.