At the start of every new year, central appraisal districts assess property values to provide a baseline of how much they will tax to fund school districts and other municipal projects.
Underscoring the importance of the issue to Texans, property taxes appear 13 times in the 2024 Republican Party of Texas Platform. With demands ranging from abolition to reduction, incremental relief, and reallocating funds, there is a lack of a clear consensus on resolving property tax issues.
Texas Scorecard spoke with two state representatives, returning State Rep. Mark Dorazio (R-San Antonio) and newcomer Pat Curry (HD-56), to learn more about their experiences protesting property taxes and plans to revise the tax code in the 89th Legislature.
“I always protest my property taxes, and I’ve saved a lot of money,” said Dorazio. “If you don’t ask, you don’t get it.”
Dorazio, who owns a general construction contracting company, started protesting in 1988. Last year, he reduced one property appraisal by half a million dollars and his tax liability by $11,000.
When asked why he protests, Dorazio said, “I want to learn the procedure because there are people that ask me questions in the legislature, and I can answer those questions with first-hand experience, and that carries more weight than just reading a document.”
Dorazio also hosts educational tax protest seminars featuring Michael Berlanga, a San Antonio-based certified professional accountant, licensed real estate broker, and certified property tax consultant at Texas True Tax.
Despite the opportunity to save thousands in property taxes, only about 10 percent of Texans protest their property taxes in most years, with few getting past the first stage.
Texas has three stages for a property tax protest: (1) an informal hearing, (2) an appraisal review board hearing, and (3) an appeal through either regular binding arbitration, a district court, or the State Office of Administrative Hearings.
“People are intimidated by appearing before the appraisal board to get their appraisals reduced,” Dorazio said. “What the seminar does is it just took the fear out of it, the edge out, and we just worked with them [constituents], and they said, ‘Oh! That’s all I have to do.’”
With the recent property tax increases and increased interest in the subject, the number of protests climbed to 13.5 percent in 2023. Half of that number protested a decade ago.
Curry also sponsored a Berlanga property tax protest seminar last year.
“Very few people have the resources or talent to be able to go out under the current system to be able to protest the way it should be. That’s why you need guys like Berlanga,” said Curry.
Curry, who owns multiple properties in Texas and across the US, said he protested taxes on 13 to 14 properties in McLennan County alone.
Curry reduced one property appraisal by $1 million because the appraisal district overvalued it. He explained that he generally does not protest property tax increases of 3 percent or less yearly but automatically challenges increases of 5 percent or more.
Curry said it takes a lot of work to review his properties. He has a team of accountants who help him rank his properties 1-5 to determine how hard they wish to protest each.
He believes that if Texas publicly reported property sale information more transparently, it would ease the burden on all property owners.
“We could fix a lot of problems by just reporting our sales,” said Curry. “We’re a non-reporting state for real estate transactions, [which] also allows illicit money to be able to enter into real estate transactions and launder money without anybody ever seeing.”
He explained that the cartels do this in places like Colony Ridge, which the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating. Often, they buy a cheap home and flip it to their LLCs to legitimize dirty money and inflate the value of an asset they sell to an unsuspecting buyer. Publicizing the transactions would make it harder for them to hide.
Dorazio knocked on doors in his last campaign and was shocked to learn that one constituent’s property tax had increased by $500 monthly.
“I said, ‘No, you mean $500 a year?’ She said, ‘No, $500 a month,’ I said, ‘That’s $6,000 a year!’ She said, ‘Yes,’” Dorazio recalled. “That’s out of balance.”
Another had his taxes increased by $18,000 in one year. He had planned to make it his last home but now will have to sell it due to excessive taxation.
Curry claims he has worked exhaustively with legislators and senior Comptroller’s office staff since the primary election to get money back to property owners.
“People can’t afford their damn rent,” said Curry. “Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen hundred bucks a month for a little bitty place that’s been here, right? It is because of property taxes.”
He said it also affects his employees and increases business costs; people are declining certain jobs because they factor in increased living costs.
“Those are our employees who we’re having to pay $18 to $22 an hour.”
Curry said most property owners pass the increased property taxes onto their renters, raising their rents, and he’s one of a few multitenant property owners who protest property tax increases in his rental properties.
“I care for my tenants, and I care for what happens because I think it’s the right thing to do.”
Both representatives agreed that while Texas’ property tax rate (1.47 percent) is more than double California’s (0.68 percent) and property taxes are essentially an unrealized gains tax, neither wished to replace it with a state income tax, stating it would introduce even more problems for Texans.
“All taxes always start low and increase from there,” said Dorazio.
Curry concurred, citing property taxes, “You notice they never go down, right?”
However, both concurred that eliminating property tax would not be as easy as people wished because they are tied to municipal bonds.
“If people demand the same services, you have to pay for it somehow,” said Dorazio.
“I don’t know where the revenue comes from to support the things that we need,” Curry said. “Other than cutting costs and getting rid of unfunded mandates.”
Citizens focused on property taxes miss the bigger picture of their underlying causes: local government bonds and inefficiency.
“People have to understand that the more they demand of government, the more it will cost them, and the more they’re going to give up their liberties because debt will destroy liberty faster than anything,” said Dorazio.
For example, Texas has one superintendent for every one of its over 1,200 ISDs. More than 40 percent–500–get paid more than Gov. Greg Abbott. According to Dorazio, that needs to change.
He believes that the state surplus should be used to help ISDs pay their bond debts faster. This would lower property taxes and benefit teachers instead of funding administrative bloat.
“It has to be unwound very methodically and very deliberately,” he said.
Curry stated that eliminating redundancy will pose a considerable challenge. Texas already attempted its version of DOGE to eliminate redundancy in the 78th Legislature under the Senate Committee for Government Organization through the 83rd Legislature. In the 84th Legislature, it morphed into the Senate Committee on Government Facilities. Then, it briefly resurfaced in the 85th Legislature as the Senate Committee for Government Reform before finally ending.
Until their proposals become law and go into effect, both suggested that protesters do not provide their counterevidence to their CAD upfront. Instead, they should ask the CAD for its evidence and formulate a plan once they receive that data.
Dorazio suggested that owners review their properties to ensure that no more than 25 percent of their appraisal is based on the cost of the land and no more than 75 percent on the price of the building.
Curry suggested that property owners contact local realtors to gather recent transactions and similar property listings on the MLS as part of their counterevidence. However, he hopes this will no longer be necessary if the publicization of property sales becomes law.
As a reminder, property taxes for last year are due on January 31.
