Data pulled from the Dallas County Appraisal District over the last five years reveals skyrocketing property tax bills for residents, displaying why tax reform and relief are desperately needed.
Wednesday, House Bill 2—which would put in place an automatic election trigger for property tax increases over 2.5 percent for large taxing entities—was watered down to exclude school districts from the lowered rollback rate, among other changes.
This is the second in a series of articles where Texas Scorecard releases the results of our study in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, calculating the average property tax bills of cities and school districts within the area and tracking the changes in those bills from 2013 to 2018.
Some Dallas-area cities and school districts cross over to other counties, so this report only contains data for the taxpayers of that local taxing entity who reside within the Dallas County Appraisal District and nowhere else. For example, most of the City of Dallas is in Dallas County, but part of it is also in Denton and Collin counties. Therefore, the data contained herein only refers to the taxpayers who live in the portion of Dallas within Dallas County.
Across the board, cities and school districts within Dallas County raised taxes—no exceptions.
For example, homeowners in Dallas and Mesquite saw the city portion of their property tax bills increase 43.7 percent and an appalling 76.8 percent. Independent school districts also saw increases; homeowners in Dallas ISD and Garland ISD saw increases of 63.4 percent and 73.7 percent.
The highest average property tax bills came from Highland Park and Highland Park Independent School District, which were $4,232 and $18,701 in 2018.
Clearly, property taxpayers need reform and relief, especially in regards to school district taxes.
A chart containing the data in full can be found below:
This is the second in a series of articles by Texas Scorecard analyzing property tax data for taxing entities in the DFW Metroplex. The previous article looked at data from Denton County. Future articles look at data from Collin and Tarrant counties.
