It is part of a property tax deal brokered by Republican lawmakers in the Texas House and Texas Senate.
AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas House of Representatives advanced a pair of Senate bills on Tuesday that would reduce property tax bills for Texans.
Property tax relief is one of Gov. Greg Abbott’s seven emergency items for the legislative session.
The lower chamber gave initial approval to Senate Bills 4 and 23, both by Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston), which would increase the homestead exemption. The current homestead exemption is $100,000 for most homeowners and $110,000 for seniors and people with disabilities.
SB 4 would increase the homestead exemption from $100,000 to $140,000. Starting this tax year, it would impact more than 5.7 million homeowners. The average Texas homeowner would save $500 per year.
State Rep. Morgan Meyer (R-University Park) added an amendment to ensure that school districts do not lose revenue due to the proposed tax cut.
“We all want property tax relief, but many of us cannot support doing it on the backs of our students in our neighborhood schools,” Rep. Gina Hinojosa (D-Austin) said.
Rep. Mike Olcott (R-Fort Worth) introduced an amendment to increase the exemption from $140,000 to $160,000. Amid questioning from lawmakers about how much that increase would cost, Olcott said he had not studied it. Rep. Amando Walle pointed out that they would have to cut funding and services from other parts of the budget if they adopted the amendment.
Meyer moved to table the amendment to stay in line with the “tightly negotiated relief package” with the Senate. He said the homestead exemption will help millions of Texas homeowners and is among the most equitable ways to cut taxes for Texans.
While Rep. Brian Harrison (R-Midlothian) said he would vote for SB 4, he said it does not go far enough, given the state’s $24 billion surplus.
“It is entirely conceivable that many homeowners and property owners will not see any real savings at all, because the appraisals are likely to increase and eat up this new exemption,” he said. “By only increasing exemptions, it actually puts inflationary pressure on property tax rates, and we should be doing everything we can as a body to get the property tax rates as close to zero as is possible, and worse, we’re putting inflationary pressure on tax rates by picking winners and losers.”
He called “never-ending” property taxes “unethical and immoral.” He said lawmakers should “stop the property tax increases” or eliminate property taxes outright.
“I’m going to vote for this bill, but not because it is a great bill that fixes property taxes in Texas, but because it appears that this is the best that we are going to get this session, and that is just a pathetic and sad indictment of this body over the past five months by failing to deal with property taxes head-on with the seriousness that issue deserves,” Harrison said. “We continue to fail the hard-working and overtaxed men and women of the great state of Texas.”
State Rep. Terry Canales (D-Edinburg) called SB 4 a Band-Aid and said lawmakers need to reduce tax rates to truly help homeowners.
“I think this is just a Band-Aid, and I’ll take a Band-Aid when we’re bleeding,” Canales said. “The reality is, if we really want to help people, we’ve got to work on the rate at which people are getting taxed out of not the valuations. Everybody likes her home to be worth a lot. It’s the rate.”
SB 23 would increase an additional homestead exemption for seniors and the disabled Texans from $10,000 to $60,000, which, coupled with SB 4, would bring the total for elderly and disabled homeowners to $200,000.
Elderly or disabled Texans whose homes are worth less than $200,000 would no longer pay maintenance and operations taxes to their local school districts. Forty-five percent of seniors and disabled Texans already pay no school tax.
Under the legislation, school districts would receive additional money from the state, $2.7 billion, so they don’t lose revenue due to the raised homestead exemptions. Elderly or disabled Texans would still need to pay local taxes for city, county or hospital districts.
Between the Senate’s two homestead exemption bills, the House’s business tax exemption and compression in the 2026-27 budget, Meyer said lawmakers will deliver about $10 billion in tax relief this session – $6 billion of that is in the new proposed cuts. The other part of the property tax bill package is House Bill 9, which would raise the “business personal property tax exemption” from $2,500 to $125,000.
It would require a constitutional amendment, so the House also advanced Senate Joint Resolutions 2 and 85 to let voters decide on increasing exemptions to help Texans struggling with high taxes. The increase would be on the November ballot and needs voter approval to go into effect.
The legislation builds on the $18 billion tax cut plan passed during the previous legislative session and approved by voters in November 2023.
The House will have to vote to approve the bills once more, and then they can go back to the Senate, where lawmakers can agree to the changes that were made or request a conference committee to hash out the differences.