Tax-hiking Cartel: Appraisal Districts Bleeding Texans Dry “You cannot challenge what anybody does or says[;] you just have to sit there and let the system roll over you.”
“I don’t think these elected officials really understand how many people are hanging on to their home with a thread or a string,” said Diane Covey, a 20-year resident of Denton County. At 67, she recently retired, while her 72-year-old husband retired in 2018.
Her 2022 property tax statement from the Denton County Tax Assessor, due on January 31, 2023, for $5,056.41 arrived in November. “Was this already presented to me earlier in the year, and my husband protested these? Or is this a new bill, and I have an opportunity to protest? [It] doesn’t really give me any instructions except, ‘You have to make this payment.’”
QuoteThe most expensive bill you pay every year is your property taxes.
Covey and others are struggling paying increasingly mountainous Texas property taxes. According to Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, the overall property tax burden in the state metastasized from $10.5 billion in 1994 to $71 billion in 2020. That’s more than a 560 percent increase. TFR also points out that this explosion has far outpaced population growth. Since 2000, the overall property tax burden spiked 216 percent, while the state population grew by only 40 percent. This trend landed the Lone Star State the sixth most burdensome property tax in the nation, according to the Tax Foundation’s 2021 report.
“The entire system is moving in a terrible direction,” James Quintero of the Texas Public Policy Foundation told Texas Scorecard. “People are really getting crushed by the size and burden of their property tax bills.”
It’s not just policy aficionados who feel this way, but also the taxpayer largely forgotten by their public servants in state and local government.
“Never have we been so helpless to [the] fact my government can tax property they obviously know nothing about,” an unnamed property owner in El Paso County wrote in his 2016 complaint. This was after he protested the taxable value assigned to his property by the El Paso Central Appraisal District. His was one of four complaints filed that year, but this likely only reveals a fraction of the discontent present.
Texas Scorecard obtained these and other complaints through an open records request to the Texas comptroller, the state agency that processes taxpayer monies. On August 30, 2022, Texas Scorecard requested records of complaints against appraisal districts from 2016 to 2021. Over the course of 21 days, communications ensued involving the comptroller asking for clarification of this request, then replying with information about what they did and did not have. It was during these communications that we learned about the existence of the tax liaison officer (TLO). Appraisal district areas “with a population of more than 120,000” are required to appoint someone to this position, according to Carol McCord, senior legal counsel at the Texas comptroller. A TLO is “responsible for resolving disputes that do not involve matters that are subject to protest under Tax Code 41.41.”
In other words, taxpayers frustrated with their appraisal districts can file complaints with their TLO, should their appraisal district have one.
-- excerpt, rest at link above --
“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent people.” ― George Orwell
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
I am really unclear when reading all the judicial business, and intend to ask a neighbor on his take who is a state appellate court judge. If I gain some knowledge, will pass along.
New Texas laws taking effect in 2023 by: Cat Keenan
Posted: Dec 30, 2022 While communities across the state of Texas gear up to celebrate the new year, they should also be aware of a few new state laws taking effect as soon as the ball drops for 2023.
The laws going into effect in 2023 were signed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in 2021 and relate to subjects including the state government’s judicial branch, state agency rulemaking, education, taxes, water, and construction.
January 2023 Changes to the Texas government’s judicial branch HB 3774 relates to the operation and administration of courts in the state government’s judicial branch, including creating multiple courts, the changing of duties for certain district officials, how certain court proceedings should be handled, and the types of state court documents that the public can access. Some aspects of the bill include:
Creating 10 district courts, five statutory county courts, one statutory probate court, and one criminal law magistrate court; Revising the jurisdiction of certain statutory county courts; Granting jurisdiction in criminal actions to the magistrates of some counties; Changing some of the ways proceedings are handled in a justice or municipal court or in juvenile justice and family courts; Providing public access to the state court document database, if authorized by the Texas Supreme Court; Revising how cases are transferred between courts and providing for the development of standardized transfer-related forms and certificates; Providing for a code of professional responsibility for the conduct of entities regulated by the Texas Forensic Science Commission, changing that commission’s investigatory power, and allowing for the commission to use appropriated funds to train and educate forensic analysts; Adding that jurors can be allowed to donate their daily reimbursement to a veterans county service office; Providing that a judge or magistrate of a district court or statutory county court can be appointed to preside over a regional specialty court program under certain conditions; Allowing a defendant participating in a veterans treatment court program to transfer to another such program in a county neighboring the one in which they work or live; Requiring the Texas Supreme Court to adopt rules regarding exemptions from seizure of a judgment debtor’s property; Providing for the protective order registry to include protective orders for victims of sexual assault or abuse, stalking, or trafficking and for the removal of certain vacated orders from the registry; Changing certain regulations for court reporters, including how reporters can be requested and how their reports might be made and documented; Extending the deadline by which a state attorney must answer an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed after a final conviction in a felony case without the death penalty, and providing other methods of serving a copy of an application for such a writ on the state’s attorney in a community supervision case; and Allowing a justice or judge to order the taking of someone’s fingerprints if they have been charged with a fine-only misdemeanor involving family violence but were not placed under custodial arrest. Ad valorem taxes and school districts SB 12, 87th 2nd CS relates to reducing the amount of a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that a school district can impose, “on the residence homestead of someone who is elderly or disabled to reflect any reduction from the preceding tax year in the district’s maximum compressed rate and to the protection of school districts against the resulting loss in local revenue.”
In practice, according to the Texas Education Agency, a school district’s property tax rate consists of a maintenance and operations (M&O) tax rate and, at times, an interest and sinking (I&S) tax rate. A maximum compressed tax rate (MCR) is created using estimated statewide property value growth and the M&O tax rate. Once both the maximum CTR and the M&O tax rates are calculated, school districts use the lower number to levy taxes. The bill, made possible after a constitutional amendment passed in May 2022, will use those rates to calculate limits on how much the school district tax rate can increase each year for certain homeowners, including people with disabilities or elderly people.
Texas “Killing Fields” murderer may be released from supervision and GPS monitoring Texas currently has a base amount of money that school districts are guaranteed to receive according to how many students they have, in one way or another, which is a base number reached mostly through local taxes that can then be buffered by state and federal funds. According to the bill, if the impact of the tax rate limit means that a school district isn’t fully funded, the district is entitled to the state covering the remaining costs. https://www.kxan.com/news/new-texas-laws...effect-in-2023/
It is reasonable to concur where Conscience does not forbid a Compliance; for Conformity is at least a Civil Virtue. But we should only press it in Necessaries, the rest may prove a Snare and Temptation to break Society. But above all, it is a Weakness in Religion and Government, where it is carried to Things of an Indifferent Nature, since besides that it makes Way for Scruples, Liberty is always the Price of it....William Penn
One of the biggest problems we have in this state is that we allow government organizations (TASB, TAC, TML, ...) to use our tax money to lobby against our interests in Austin.
Tue Jan 10, 2023 12:08 pm (Last edited: Tue Jan 10, 2023 12:08 pm)
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