New Texas law gives senior citizens, people who are disabled property tax break (2024)

AUSTIN, Texas (KEYE) — For the first time in Texas history, a new bill is giving property tax breaks to people who are disabled or over the age of 65.

KEYE was told the new law will help people stay in their homes. The biggest question, though, is how will schools be able to recoup the expected loss in revenue.

Texas State Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R-Houston) believes it’s important for all homeowners to have property tax relief.

The great news is that those over 65 will actually start seeing their tax bills go down, not just stay the same every year," said Bettencourt.

Senate Bill 12, which Bettencourt authored, is limiting the amount of property taxes school districts can impose on people who are 65 and older or disabled.

So basically, what Senate Bill 12 did is that it unfreezes the frozen value and then lowers it every year, that we have what's called compression in school tax rates or school tax rates come down year after year. So, the over 65 will get the benefit of compression,” said Bettencourt.

The bill passed both in the House and Senate during the 2021 legislative session. Education attorney Catherine Michael said the bill was created to overcome shortcomings in a previous 2019 bill that allowed “some” caps on property taxes but excluded the elderly and disabled from exemptions.

The change is not going to be dramatic for school districts. If they have a shortcoming due to some changes in their communities due to fewer property taxes coming in, they can actually still apply to the state for some of that excess funding,” said Michael.

Education Austin President Ken Zarifis said he would like to see the state start exploring other revenues to invest in public education.

You have to change the funding formula. Changing taxes and cutting taxes doesn’t change the funding formula that has to happen to improve our schools. This state has billions of dollars in savings and some of that is largely due because of Austin's recapture, and we should be able to access those dollars to help our kids. The more they cut taxes, and they think they're being heroes, and they are for very few people. They're hurting our children," said Zarifis.

Michael said the move is a good thing.

Frankly, by keeping people in their homes, whether we're talking about the elderly or the disabled, that really keeps people in the community, which will keep up the property values altogether and allow more property taxes to come in,” said Michael.

Bettencourt said 87% of the public approves of this law, which went into effect at the start of 2023.