Leadership1 publisher2 min readPublished
Texas exempts six in ten older and disabled homeowners from the school property levy
Relief for older and disabled homeowners keeps widening in Texas. That leaves first-time buyers still inside the school levy pricing an increase nobody has yet measured for them.
The Board Room · Leadership desk
What happened
- Business Insider reports that about 61% of older and disabled homeowners in Texas pay no school district property tax, up from 44% in 2024.
- Across all Texas homesteads, almost 40% pay no property taxes to school districts at all.
- Taylor Scriber, a millennial house-hunting in Texas, is costing out worst-case property tax scenarios because he expects his local government to recoup the cuts through the bill on his first home.
- A Census analysis found voters 65 and older overrepresented in the 2024 election by 3.5 percentage points, with the 18-to-29 and 30-to-44 groups both underrepresented.
Compiled by The Board RoomSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- cost The property tax line in a Texas purchase model behaves like a variable rather than a fixed local input, and the owners still inside the school levy are the ones exposed when it is revised.
- decision Before pricing a district, a buyer or an employer sizing a relocation package has to establish who absorbs the forgone school revenue: the state, or the neighbors still on the roll.
- precedent Relief granted to the age group that turns out most heavily is easier to extend than to withdraw, so the exempt share published today is a reasonable floor for what the next session produces.
Going from 44% to 61% is a 17-point move, a rise of roughly 39% in the exempt share since 2024 [1][1]. What that does to anyone else's bill turns on whether the state replaces the school revenue it forgoes or the district collects it from the homesteads still paying, and the Business Insider account does not say which [11].
Texas has no income tax, so schools and other municipal services lean on sales and property levies [3]. That leaves two main levers, and relief on one puts weight on the other. If the replacement money comes from sales taxes, the cost reaches renters and people who will never claim a homestead exemption.
The relief goes to households with modest incomes. Just over 57% of Americans over 65 have annual incomes under $40,000, by Business Insider's analysis of the Current Population Survey [7]. Older owners on fixed incomes get a lower bill. Fewer taxable homesteads are left inside the school levy to pay for the same schools.
Emily Ekins, an author of a report on Social Security sentiment for a libertarian think tank, said: "Older people vote at higher rates than younger people. And as long as that's the case, lawmakers are going to be more responsive to the desires and demands of older people than younger people." [10] The younger cohort doubts what the transfer buys: just a quarter of 18-to-49-year-olds are confident in the future of Social Security, according to an AARP survey [8].
Taylor Scriber put the buyer's side in one sentence. "You're stuck there, and you're looking at an inevitable property tax increase, because a group of people are voting to opt themselves out," he said [5]. Family and friends over 65 were sympathetic when he raised it, he said, until they got to their own bills: "They just kind of thought about it for a moment, and they were like, 'But I want my property taxes to be lowered,'" [6].
The observable figure is the exempt share, and the remaining 39% of older and disabled owners is the pool a further extension would reach [2].
This quarter, nothing in this record changes a Texas property tax rate. Over the next decade, the exempt share widens only if legislatures keep extending the exemption, and Ekins's point about turnout is the reason to expect they will [10].
What to watch
- Whether the state budget replaces the school revenue the exemptions forgo, or districts raise rates on the homesteads still paying.
- The next published reading of the exempt share, and whether the 2024-to-now direction continues.
- Whether legislatures in other states without an income tax extend similar age- or disability-based exemptions.