The February University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll illustrated, not for the first time, that the latest battle in Texas Republican leaders’ forever war on property taxes is fueled in part by many voters’ views that those taxes have a burdensome effect on their finances – and that lawmakers’ past efforts have done little to relieve those burdens. Yet even as an evident mixture of demand and disappointment drive the latest property tax reduction push in the legislature, the chances of lawmakers providing enough relief to earn positive reviews from voters is likely to be even more complicated by mounting economic disruption triggered by the Trump administration's policies.

On the ground in Texas, the seeming alignment of lawmakers' priorities with public sentiment might be good news for Republican leaders insofar as it suggests that, in addition to following their own ideological dispositions, they are trying to provide policies that Texas voters actually want. Even amidst significant cooling in the real estate market and looming economic disruption that could spread from the national economy into Texas, in the short term, Texas leaders are committed to attempting once again to achieving property tax relief that Texans’ will respond to, and consequently give elected officials credit for the achievement.

But faint praise, largely bipartisan, in response to their efforts to date suggest those leaders are likely to continue finding it difficult to convince voters that they should be lauded for their increasingly regular biennial efforts to lower property taxes.

The most recent polling provides significant insight into the Sisyphean political task facing Texas lawmakers committed to rolling this large boulder up a particularly steep hill – with no peak in sight.

The immediate reviews of past efforts suggest that the commitment to cutting property taxes is a double-edged sword for Texas leaders, insofar as they are responding to public opinion when they undertake the difficult effort, but court disappointment if not punishment when their efforts are perceived by voters as inadequate. Amidst the legislature’s contentious efforts to deliver property tax relief during the 2023 sessions, a June 2023 UT/TxPP poll found that only 25% of voters approved of how the legislature and state leaders had handled the issue of property taxes, with only 12% “extremely confident” by the end of that year that the Legislature had “reduced property taxes enough to make a difference to most Texans,” including only 15% of Republicans. Approval was even lower (20%) after the 2021 reductions (which were smaller and came amidst the superheating of the real estate market).

The political difficulties evident in polling data result in part from policy challenges posed by what is, given the fundamentals of tax policy in Texas, a very difficult if not intractable policy problem, even if some of the macroeconomic forces that have driven property values and tax bills are beginning to abate.

The state doesn’t actually levy a property tax, but nonetheless relies on revenue from local property taxes, both directly (to fund public education), and indirectly (to fund local government efforts at the city and county level). This means that any effort the state makes to lower property taxes has to be filtered through a process whereby the state either “buys down” local property taxes with money from general revenue the state does collect, like from the sales tax (itself a regressive levy), or by creating ever more stringent mechanisms to limit local entities’ ability to increase taxes (rates, revenues, or both). (These mechanisms are designed to arrest the growth in taxes, including those felt by non-residential owners — another important ingredient in the political complexity Republicans face when trying to meet the demands of different constituencies). 

What the legislature can’t control is the value of the property being taxed, which largely determines how much someone is likely to end up paying, and/or how much their bill is going to vary from one year to the next. In recent years, this has almost exclusively meant that property values have gone up — normally a good thing (at least for residential properties) — but so too have people’s property tax bills, despite herculean efforts on the part of the legislature. As Governor Abbott made a point of asserting in his state of the state address, increases in locally-driven property tax revenue have accompanied the (until recently) booming real estate market in much of the state along with increased tax bills.

The objective fact of Texas property owners’  comparatively high property tax bills has combined with the political incentives to keep the issue in the public eye given large, local governments in Texas primarily controlled by the party out of power at the legislature — though certainly not entirely controlled by Democrats. Regardless of how Texas got here, and the nature of the political incentives, simply put, both in isolation and compared to other state taxes, Texans feel burdened by property taxes. 

Asked in the February poll about the impact that different state taxes have on their personal finances, 68% of Texas voters, slightly more than 2 out of 3, said that property taxes have a “major impact” on their personal finances, as opposed to a minor impact (18%) or no impact at all (14%). In many ways this isn’t shocking given the state’s combined reliance (state and local) on property taxes along with sale’s tax revenue (51% said this tax had a major impact). 

But even after a historical investment in property tax reduction given a significant budget surplus during the 2023 session, the share of Texans who say that property taxes have a major impact on their personal finances has actually increased since the question was asked before the last big investment in 2023: in February of that year, 58% said that property taxes had a major impact, 10 points less than February, 2025.

Do property taxes have a major, minor, or no impact on your personal finances? (University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Polling)
	February 2025	February 2023
Major Impact	68%	58%
Minor Impact	18%	23%
No Impact	14%	19%

Of course, people’s tax burdens include more than just property taxes. Asked which state tax has the biggest impact on their personal finances, the majority of Texas voters, 52%, said the property tax, followed by the sales tax (23%), both higher than when people were asked the same question at the beginning of 2023 (47% said the property tax, 21% said the sales tax).

While many issues make their way onto the policy agenda due to the more or less exclusive preferences of the state’s majority party voters, property tax frustrations tend to be bipartisan. Approximately three-quarters of Republicans (76%) said that property taxes had a major impact on their finances (more than any other tax), but so too did 62% of Democrats (And as a side note, though coalitional differences between the two parties might portend more concern with the sales tax among Democratic voters, inflation may have impacted this dynamic: 51% of both Democrats and Republicans say that the sales tax has a major impact on their finances).

The dissatisfaction implied by the fact that voters are expressing this sentiment less than two years after approving a constitutional amendment that promised significant property tax relief is straightforwardly apparent in the small share of voters who say that past efforts have had a major impact. Reminded of the legislature’s efforts to reduce property taxes during prior sessions, only one in four voters said that these efforts have had a major impact on their personal finances, with 35% saying these efforts have had a minor impact, and 40% saying that these efforts have had no impact (27%) or that they had no opinion (13%). Republicans were only slightly more likely to say that these efforts have had a major impact compared to Democrats (29% vs. 22%). And while renters were more likely than homeowners to say no impact (34% vs. 25%), the share of each saying these cuts have made a major impact was the same (25%). Similarly, the share of voters observing a major impact from these efforts was consistent regardless of income, 25% of those with family incomes under $40,000, 26% of those families earning $40,000 to $80,000 annually, and 25% of those earning over $80,000.

The upshot of these patterns in attitudes is that property taxes remain in the top tier of legislative priorities for both legislative leaders and for voters — with some exceptions. Asked how important it is for the legislature to address different priorities as laid out by state and legislative leadership, 45% of voters said it was “extremely important” to reduce property taxes, with only three other issues receiving a higher priority designation. Improving the reliability of the energy grid (a perpetual concern of voters since the 2021 winter storms) topped the list, followed by lowering the cost of everyday goods and services, and increasing access to healthcare. Just below reducing property taxes in importance was lowering the cost of housing, deemed extremely important by 42% of voters.

Given the state’s political dynamics, partisan differences are more apparent in attitudes about legislative priorities. While 52% of Republicans say that reducing property taxes is extremely important (second only to directing local law enforcement to cooperate with the federal government in deportation efforts), only 38% of Democrats assign the same priority to property tax reduction, significantly less emphasis than they place on other issues (10 other issues, to be exact, with increasing access to healthcare topping the list at 68%).

Which brings us back to the double-edged sword. Loud prioritizing by Governor Abbott (who declared property tax relief a priority in his most recent state of the state address) and others does convey a “we feel your pain” vibe to voters, jaded as they are. But the governor’s casting of blame on local governments was a telling hedge, in terms of both the difficulty of the task at hand and as a resort to the reliable hobby horse of local government profligacy.

The February poll also suggests that voters aren’t especially primed to blame the locals. Asked to evaluate a series of statements about both state and local government on the most recent UT/TxPP poll, 43% of Texas voters said that their local government is “mostly careful with people’s tax dollars” compared to 35% who said that they were mostly careless. While this may seem like tepid support for the notion that people trust their local governments, only 35% said that the legislature is mostly careful with people’s tax dollars, compared to 38% who said that they’re mostly careless.

This pattern in attitudes has been evident since at least 2022. Before then, in both October 2017 and October 2012 polling, more voters said that state government was careful with tax dollars than said it was careless, with the flip coming in December of 2022, when only 31% said the state was careful while 48% said the state was careless. At the same time, 48% of voters said that their local governments mostly address the needs of local residents, while only 41% could say the same about state government.

While the attempt to blame high property taxes on local government will have some resonance among Republican legislators, even this tried and true hobby horse is unlikely to divert voters’ attention away from state leaders' promises to provide meaningful relief from Texas' high property taxes. The governor and the legislature remain subject to Texas voters’ skepticism of state leaders who have actively promised to reduce property taxes while simultaneously keeping property tax reform on the political agenda.

The cooling of real estate values in the state may work to the GOP political leadership’s advantage by exerting extra drag on property tax increases in addition to whatever property tax relief the legislature manages to pass. But the economic conditions that have helped cool the real estate market have also contributed to rising economic anxieties among voters. The economic stress driving broad concern about prices and other costs of living evident in February polling likely contributed to the increases in voters’ perceptions of the impact of the two biggest state taxes on their household finances. In a time of heightened price sensitivity and belt-tightening, property taxes are a big expense for those who have to pay them directly and for those who they are passed on to (e.g. renters, to the extent they are aware). Sales taxes are more dispersed, but are an expense that rises most evidently along with broad increases in prices.

As the Trump administration's economic, trade, and foreign policies seeming more likely by the day to trigger a recession in the near future (by their own admission), cutting property taxes enough to provide meaningful economic relief looks even more difficult. Even if they are legislatively successful, an economic downturn makes it less likely that voters will judge their achievements as meaningful. Lawmakers have little choice but to keep straining to push that boulder uphill, but the path is growing steeper, and the peak further out of view.