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Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 312 -- Texas Tax Reform

Property Tax Relief-

As noted before, Texas is one of several states that has a favorable tax scheme relative to other states. But property taxes in Texas have gone sky-high in recent years (.pdf):

Governor Rick Perry's Texas Tax Reform Commission issued its report and plan this week to fix the problem.

Essentially, the plan is to substantially raise the tax on tobacco (by a buck to $1.41 per pack), broaden the franchise tax base (while lowering the franchise tax rate from 4.5% to 1%), and use the budget surpluses to "buy down" property taxes.

Lower property taxes and funding public education are essentially the only two issues that voting Texans even care about. There's urgency, therefore, to get something done this election year.

While this proposal technically raises taxes here and lowers them there, most people will see tax relief:

Overall, the net savings would average slightly more than 2 percent for non- smokers, after consumers paid potentially higher costs of goods and services associated with a new business tax.

However, cutting property taxes by a third (and by 6 billion dollars) makes the plan a winner. We'll see how this goes, though. Those of us who have read other reports by other commissions [ahem, the President's Social Security and tax reform panels, ahem] know well the perils of legislative maneuvering. It's easy to find flaws in any plan to change the status quo, but when the status quo is broken, a few flaws are more than tolerable.

Previous Trivia Tidbit: Environmentalism.

Posted by Will Franklin · 30 March 2006 09:05 PM

Comments

Posted by: Hoodlumman at March 31, 2006 02:04 PM