How we did the analysis

Based on school district property tax collections over the past decade, Hearst Newspapers has calculated what the savings would have been for the owner of a $200,000 home if proposed reforms had been in place from 2008 to 2017. The analysis also calculates the difference in tax revenue for each school district if the plan had been in place. To do that, we first acquired the property tax rates, revenues and total taxable valuations of property in each school district from the state’s comptroller. The data covered 2008 through 2017. The analysis then calculated each district’s year over year revenue as a percentage increase or decrease. If the district’s revenue was higher than 2.5 percent year over year, we calculated what the district’s Maintenance and Operations tax rate would be to stay under the 2.5 percent cap proposed by Gov. Greg Abbott. Once the new tax rates were calculated, comparisons were made between the actual tax revenue generated and the amount generated under the cap plan. To calculate the impact on individual taxpayers, we took a home valued at $200,000 in 2008. Then we adjusted the value of the home each year by the change in taxable property values for the whole district. For each year, the analysis calculated what the new tax rate would be if revenues stayed under the 2.5 percent cap. Because of the assumptions in the analysis, estimated tax savings may be overstated in some areas.