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By Tim Brown, Operations Manager, County Information Project |
THE TEXAS’ PROPERTY TAX SYSTEM, as reformed in 1979, is intended to base each property’s taxation on 100 percent of its market value. Over the years, however, various partial exemptions and deductions for specific public pur-poses have resulted in a significant amount of taxable value becoming no longer available to local governments to meet their service needs.
The pie chart below shows the total, statewide market value of taxable properties with slices indicating various partial exemp-tions and deductions as well as the remaining taxable value for county tax purposes. It does not include the value of totally exempt properties (publicly owned land/buildings and churches, for example). The “other partial exemptions” include such items as the disabled or deceased veteran’s survivor exemption, the pollution control exemption, value lost to historical designation and other non-required exemptions. Overall, the various exemptions and deductions reduced the total market value of taxable properties by 17.4 percent.
