Austin, TX – Senator Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston) authored Senate Bill 91 in the 2nd special session to provide at least $2 Billion and up to $4 Billion toward lowering school district Maintenance and Operation tax rate compression in property taxes for everyone in the 22-23 property tax year! SB 91 was heard in Senate Finance today and unanimously passes to the full Senate for further action. The Texas A&M Real Estate Center has found the median home price in Texas is $298,013 as of June 2021, and after the 25,000 homestead exemption, homeowners would save $188 this year and nearly $200 on a $300,000 taxable value home next year.

"Texans will see a reduction of at least 6.6 pennies on their school district tax rate in the 2022 property tax year," said Senator Bettencourt. "Each billion available for compression will lower the M&O tax rate for all property owners in Texas, which is another big win in property tax relief for all Texans!" he added.

The comptroller is responsible for providing the Texas Legislature with an estimate of the state's available revenue at the beginning of special session and month to month in the interim. Fortunately, the Texas economy has been preforming extremely well, even while recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. SB 91 uses a formula to access up to an additional $2 Billion and up to $4 Billion for tax rate compression and the new estimate provided by the Comptroller on June 1, 2022 will determine how much additional revenue, if any, would be available. Any revenue amount over 8.35 billion would be split 50/50 between general revenue fund and school tax rate compressions with the first $500 Million remaining in the General Revenue Fund up to 12.35 in General Revenue fund. This bill has 18 bipartisan co-authors.

"The amount of available revenue in Texas has allowed the Legislature to take action in allocating money to several different areas, like property tax relief, border security, and a 13th check for teachers," said Bettencourt. "A great opportunity to continue to provide tax compression so all Texas taxpayers see the relief but we must stay under the existing spending cap limit," added Bettencourt.

In order to stay below the state spending cap, the maximum amount of total school M&O property tax compression is $4 Billion dollars. There will be no reduction in school district formula funding due to the SB 91 tax compression as state dollars will replace local dollars for the 22-23 school year.

"Due to the passage of SB 1336 by Senator Hancock and as a co-author one important clause is that tax relief will finally not be a part of the consolidated spending cap," he concluded.

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