But…it still has to be approved by Texas voters…1 of 14 amendments on the ballot in election that is already underwayabout the new property tax relief here in Texas, and specifically what it will do for the estimated two million-plus homeowners who have a ceiling on their school taxes. As we talked about before, that ceiling is the amount of school taxes owed the year someone with a homestead turns 65 or becomes disabled.
That much-reduced figure would become their new tax ceiling going forward. Again, as long as they don’t significantly improve their homes in the future, it’s possible many of them will never pay school taxes again. Still, we wanted to see actual tax bills that prove this. Indeed, a senior homeowner from Collin County who we talked about last time confirms their school taxes, which had held steady at $1,245 per year since they qualified for a ceiling a decade ago, have dropped to $0 now.
With new relief applied now, they say that preliminarily, 60% of homeowners who had ceilings have dropped to $0 in school taxes. More specifically, they say “The number of homeowners whose tax ceiling has been lowered to zero has increased from 23,182 to 55,415”. Some of them involve huge sums of money and some of them, including the property tax relief amendment, will affect a huge number of Texans. Maybe because of that, we will see better turnout than the dismal showings we have seen in prior constitutional amendment elections in Texas:2019: Registered voters: 15,962,988 Turnout: 12.