Texas Supreme Court ruling

[Bill Scott]

What is the name of your state?Texas

Texas Supreme Court ruled that tax on property for the funding of schools was illegal. My question is: do I have to pay for the portion of my tax bill that is for use by school district? Or have I misread how the ruleing was meant?

 

[Snipes5]

If the Texas Supreme Court has outlawed a particular type of tax, you can reasonably expect that the bill will not include any illegal taxes.

If the ruling is recent, you should inquire with the taxing authority and see if new bills will be issued.

Snipes

 

[anteater]

What is the name of your state?Texas

Texas Supreme Court ruled that tax on property for the funding of schools was illegal. My question is: do I have to pay for the portion of my tax bill that is for use by school district? Or have I misread how the ruleing was meant?

You are joking, right? Dream on.

 

[dallas702]

The TX state constitution might declare that all taxes must go to the General Fund and not be set aside specifically for either collection or disbursement, but that doesn't mean that they can't collect just as much as before. The revenues are then disbursed through the state's budgeting process. States that have this provision usually raise extra money for schools through bond issues or local assessments.

TX may be trying to stop situations like CA where they got into the lottery business by claiming the profits were going to fund education. In reality they funded a whole new class of government workers while traditional state revenues were reduced by whatever the "profit" might be.

 

[Some Random Guy]

Indiana's supreme court ruled that the property tax system was unconstitutional. Their remedy was to force the state to come up with a new system of assessing property. The court did not rule that everyone got out of paying taxes.

Find the ruling and figure out what the judge's remedy to the situation was.

 

[anteater]

One Texas state court or another has been ruling the school financing system unconstituional for the last 20 years. If I hadn't had to pay local school property taxes because of that, I would be one rich anteater by now!

Without going back and reading about it again, I believe the TX Supreme Court ruled that, although the taxes are levied and collected by the local school districts, the whole system of funding amounted to a statewide property tax, which is not allowed by the TX constitution.

The Texas Supremes gave the legislature until July 2006 to come up with something.