AUSTIN (Nexstar) – After more than two decades in Liberty Hill, Lyndon Ebright and his wife have built a good life in their forever home.
“I have a lot of sweat work on the property,” Ebright said. He works on wood and metal projects in his backyard shop while his wife tends a vegetable garden just below the patio he built.
But those improvements, and the raging development of the greater Austin area, are taking a toll on their tax bills.
“They’re going to price me out of the house,” Ebright said. “I’m going to be forced to sell and I don’t want to be forced to sell just because I have to pay my taxes.”
Ebright is recently retired and on a fixed income. They’re debt-free and have paid off their house, but Ebright is still worried about their long-term stability because of one scandalous cost: property taxes.
In 2018, the Williamson Central Appraisal District assessed Ebright’s home at $71,506. This year, that value has increased to $137,971.
“It’s a massive increase in five years. An unrealistic increase in five years,” Ebright said. “When you have a fixed income, you have to watch very carefully. I feel sorry for so many other seniors in this state.”
In 2019, Ebright’s estimated tax bill from Liberty Hill ISD alone was $826.32. Based on the current value of your home and the school district’s operating and maintenance tax rate, that bill would be about $1,138, not including the other entities that collect their own property taxes, such as the district of emergency services, a road fund and Williamson County itself. .
State leaders are working overtime in a special legislative session to try to lower that total. But after six months of touting property tax cuts as their top priority, top Texas Republicans are at an intractable impasse.
Gov. Greg Abbott has proposed using $17.6 billion — about half of the state’s historic budget surplus — to lower school district property tax rates. Under his plan, the state would “cut” tax rates by 26 cents for every hundred dollars of a home’s valuation. State leaders and policy experts refer to this as “tax rate compression.”
This plan would save Ebright just over $200.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and his Texas Senate are unanimously supporting an alternative plan. It spends the same $17.6 billion and devotes about 70 percent of it to tax rate compression, but also increases the homestead exemption by two and a half times. Currently, Texans can deduct $40,000 of their home’s value from their taxes. Patrick wants to increase that to $100,000.
That plan would save Ebright more than $700, about $500 more than Abbott’s plan.
“I like that,” Ebright said. “It’s a cut at the top.”
However, the Texas House and Governor Abbott have made it clear that they are not in favor of touching the property exemption. The Texas Senate has also made it clear that they are not backing down from this fight. For the foreseeable future, stagnation persists.
“I will call special session after special session after special session until a solution is reached,” Governor Abbott told reporters this week.
This prolonged uncertainty adds to the frustrations of Texans like Ebright.
“These guys are playing with all these cultural issues, but they’re dealing with something that helps Texans, you know, deal with their property taxes,” he said. “Something has to be done. Especially for the elderly. I hate to see elderly people forced out of their homes. That would be a problem.”
