Later this week, the Austin City Council is expected to adopt its budget for the coming fiscal year, which includes how it plans to tax property owners. Some institutions that collect property taxes, like the Austin Independent School District, have already adopted their budgets. If you own property, this will affect how much you owe […]
Homestead Exemption
A reduction on a home’s taxable value in order to protect the home’s value.
Posted inCity Council
Austin raises property tax exemption for homeowners to highest rate allowed
As the median price of a home in Austin surpassed half a million dollars this year, City Council members voted Thursday to tax a smaller amount of owners’ home values. City leaders doubled the current general homestead exemption of 10 percent, taking it to 20 percent, the highest amount permitted by Texas law. That means homeowners will […]
Posted inCourts
AG tells Cedar Park no deal on tax exemption
Attorney General Ken Paxton has ruled that the city of Cedar Park is not allowed to set its minimum property tax exemption at $10,000 but must use the $5,000 minimum set by state law. Last spring, the Cedar Park City Council approved an ordinance granting residential property owners a $10,000 exemption on their homesteads. However, […]
Posted inCity Council
Council raises homestead exemption to 10%
On a vote of 7-4, Council on Thursday approved raising the homestead exemption from the current rate of 8 percent to 10 percent for the coming year. The resolution’s sponsors included Council members Ellen Troxclair, Leslie Pool, Ann Kitchen and Ora Houston. Mayor Steve Adler and Council members Alison Alter and Pio Renteria joined the […]
Posted inCity Council
Homestead exemption talk on the agenda
District 8 Council Member Ellen Troxclair is once again working to increase the general homestead exemption for property owners. She has worked on this issue since she was elected in 2014. Although City Council voted for a 6 percent exemption in 2015 and raised that amount to 8 percent in 2016, last year Troxclair was […]
Posted inBudget
Homestead exemption unlikely to change
After hours of budget presentations and discussions Wednesday, City Council took up the always controversial issue of homestead exemptions. They have heard for several months that this year’s budget will be tight, leaving no room for additions without corresponding subtractions. Council’s lone conservative, Council Member Ellen Troxclair, found herself without allies in arguing that Council […]
Posted inBudget
Growth slows, making city budget tighter
The days of Austin’s turbo-charged growth are over – at least for now. City Council got that message from the city’s economic adviser, Jon Hockenyos, as well as Deputy Chief Financial Officer Ed Van Eenoo, at Wednesday’s financial forecast and economic outlook work session. Hockenyos told Council that the Austin area “remains among the regional […]
Posted inReporters' Notebook
Reporter’s notebook: On sucking eggs
The etymology of egg-sucking… Trust us when we say that a lot of work goes on behind the scenes to bring our readers their daily Austin Monitor. And a lot of that work is done by our invaluable, East Coast-based proofreader, Tricia Olszewski, who, though a master of the English language, is occasionally baffled by […]
Posted inBudget
Council sets stage for last-minute homestead exemption debate
City Council has scheduled one final meeting this month in order to take another crack at fulfilling a key campaign promise many members made during the 2014 elections. Wednesday afternoon’s special called session will feature the third-reading vote on a measure to increase the homestead exemption to 8 percent. Last Thursday evening, Council voted 6-5 […]
Posted inAustin
Reporter’s Notebook: Things happened
So, what’s up with Wednesday?… After last week’s epic City Council meeting that stretched until about 3 in the morning, there were very few people left bemoaning the looming July break. In fact, Thursday was scheduled to be the last official Council meeting before the summer break, but eagle-eyed Austinites (aka our readers) may have […]
Posted inBudget
Council talks budget affordability and city services
There are some things that the proposed Fiscal Year 2015-16 city budget does and some things that it does not do. Aside from raising the property tax rate, along with utility rates and fees for many homeowners, one of the major things the budget does is implement a 6 percent homestead exemption. One of the […]
Posted inAustin
Council adopts six percent homestead exemption
Despite the fact that views among City Council members run the gamut as far as implementing a homestead tax exemption, they opted in a 7-4 vote to meet in the middle early Friday morning, approving a 6 percent exemption for this year and expressing an intent to increase it to 20 percent over the course […]