Former GOP state Sen. Don Huffines’ recently launched gubernatorial bid is wagering that Republican Gov. Greg Abbott isn’t Republican enough for Texas.
According to his nascent campaign website, the border is too open, the voter rolls are too rife with “illegal aliens,” and the taxes are too high. To cure the state of its taxation problem, Huffines’ campaign proposes an unusual solution for a state that already doesn’t collect income taxes — the elimination of property taxes altogether.
“Texans have some of the highest property taxes in the nation, and the tax only goes up,” his campaign website says.
“We will put the broken property tax system on a path to zero,” it continues.
There’s little question that property taxes in Texas have generally been rising year over year. The Texas Comptroller’s Biennial Property Tax Report shows that single family home values have been on the rise since 2010, resulting in a corresponding rise in the property taxes levied by local governments in each of those years.
In 2010, local governments in Texas collected $40.2 billion in property taxes. By 2019, the latest year for which data is available, that number had risen to $67.2 billion. Nearly half of these totals is collected from property taxes levied on single family homes.
But has this rise launched Texas’ taxes into the realm of high-tax states like New York, California and New Jersey? Does Texas now have “some of the highest property taxes in the nation,” as Huffines claims? …
Read the full story and see how Huffines’ claim rated at PolitiFact, and listen to an interview with PolitiFact’s Brandon Mulder in the audio player above.
