Data pulled from the Denton County Appraisal District details the pain of the average property tax payer in that district and why reform and relief are desperately needed.
Several sources have said House Bill 2, which would put in place an automatic election trigger for property tax increases over 2.5 percent for large taxing entities, may be watered down to exclude school districts from the lowered rollback rate among other changes.
Since January, Texas Scorecard has been conducting a study of counties in the DFW metroplex to calculate the average property tax bills of local taxing entities within the area and tracking the changes in those bills from 2013 to 2018.
Some of the local taxing entities cross over to other counties, so this report only contains data for the taxpayers of that local taxing entity who reside within the Denton County Appraisal District and nowhere else. For example, most of Fort Worth is in Tarrant County, but part of it is in Denton. Therefore, the data contained herein only refers to the taxpayers who live in the portion of Fort Worth within Denton County and not the rest of Fort Worth residents who reside in Tarrant.
Across the board, local taxing entities within Denton County raised taxes—except the City of Hackberry, which lowered its average property tax bill by 19 percent. Homeowners in Denton and The Colony saw their city property tax bills increase 33.8 percent and a whopping 64.9 percent.
The independent school districts were just as bad, if not worse. Denton ISD homeowners saw increases of 46.8 percent and those in Little Elm ISD saw increases of a shocking 76 percent.
The highest average property tax bills come from Southlake and Argyle Independent School District, which in 2018 were $2,664 and $7,037.
Charts containing the data in full can be found below:
This is the first in a series of articles by Texas Scorecard analyzing property tax data for taxing entities in the DFW Metroplex. Future articles look at data from Dallas, Collin, and Tarrant Counties.
