The majority of Texans (54%) think they are paying too much in property taxes, and only a very small minority (5%) think they are paying too little, according to a poll by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
One in four Texans (26%) told pollsters that they pay “about the right amount” in property taxes. 16% said they don’t know or have no opinion.
Most of those who said they pay too little in property taxes were Democrats. Still, only 9% of Democrats said they pay too little, compared to 45% of Democrats who said they pay too much.
Rural voters were less likely to say they want to pay higher property taxes, with only 2% saying that, whereas 8% of those polled in urban areas and 4% in suburbs said taxes should be higher.
Trend Over Time
The percentage of those who say they think they pay too much in property taxes is relatively unchanged from a year ago.
In June 2019, the same poll found that 60% of Texans think they pay too much on property taxes. In February a year ago, it was 58%.
In 2019 the Texas Legislature passed SB 2, a bill designed to limit property tax growth. Lawmakers touted the bill as a major win for taxpayers, whereas critics said that it didn’t do enough to rein in property tax growth, which is driven partly by rising property valuations.
Opinion on Public Education Funding
The poll also found that 50% of Texans think the state spends too little on primary and secondary education, which is mostly funded through property taxes.
Only 12% of Texans thought state spending on education was too much, and 21% thought it was about the right amount.
Democrats are likely to say that education spending is too little (69%), while Republicans are divided on the issue. A third of Republicans think that education spending is about right, a third think it’s too little, and the rest either have no opinion or think that the spending is to high.
Methodology
The UT survey was carried out for UT Austin by internet market research firm YouGov. This company maintains a panel of respondents nationwide who have opted in to take part in web surveys, including over 20,000 active panelists who are residents of Texas.
The current UT poll features responses from 1,200 registered Texas voters. It was carried out between Jan. 31 to Feb. 9. The overall margin of error is +/- 2.83 percentage points,
YouGov panelists are recruited through web advertising campaigns, permission-based email campaigns, partner-sponsored solicitations, telephone-to-web recruitment, and mail-to-web recruitment.
According to the survey methodology, “In practice, a search in Google may prompt an active YouGov advertisement soliciting opinion on the search topic. At the conclusion of the short survey respondents are invited to join the YouGov panel in order to receive and participate in additional surveys…”
