Harris County property taxes grew faster than inflation and population. | Nataliya Vaitkevich/Pexels
Harris County property taxes grew faster than inflation and population. | Nataliya Vaitkevich/Pexels
A report published in February by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) said Harris County's property tax levy grew 38.5% from $1.8 billion to $2.4 billion from 2016-20.
The report, titled "Just the Facts: Property Taxes in Texas' Most Populous Cities, Counties, and School Districts 2nd Edition," by James Quintero and Anthony Jones, said the combined population and inflation of the city grew by 10.2% during that time, resulting in a difference of 28.4%.
"It's not a stretch to say that property taxes are out of control in the Lone Star State," Quintero, a policy director at TPPF, said in a newsletter on March 3. "As a result, local governments are getting rich while families are forced to make hard decisions.
Property taxes are Texas' highest tax, the state comptroller said in the report. Nearly half of all tax dollars collected in the Lone Star State in 2019 came from property taxes. The state had 4,256 separate property taxing units that year as well, some of which overlapped.
"The laws and systems surrounding Texas' property tax are notoriously complicated, oftentimes requiring a taxpayer to seek help through consultants, accountants, advocates, and attorneys," the TPPF report said.
Taxes are also growing far faster than the preferred rate of growth, which is calculated as population growth plus inflation, the TPPF report said.
The Balance, a personal finance platform, ranked Texas in the top-10 states with the highest real estate tax rates in the United States, with a median payment of $4,065 per year on an inflation-adjusted dollar.
The Tax Foundation reported in 2021 that Texas had the sixth-highest property tax rate, measured as property taxes paid as a percentage of owner-occupied housing value during 2019.
Arlington's property tax burden grew by 37.3% from $138.8 million in 2016 to $190.6 million in 2020, the TPPF report said. The combined population and inflation for the city grew by 7.8% during that time, resulting in a difference of 29.5%.
Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, El Paso, Arlington, Corpus Christi, Plano, and Laredo actually shrank in population from 2016-20, the TPPF report said. However, as residents left the larger urban areas, the zones outside of these cities benefited from population growth.
All of Texas' 10 most populous counties experienced some amount of population growth from 2016-20, the TPPF report said.
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