Tag Archives: texas income tax

12/9/20

How Does Texas Do It?

Texans voted for a constitutional ban against imposing a state income tax in an election held in November 2019. The situation until then had been murky on the issue of a personal income tax relying upon something called the “Bob Bullock Amendment” which allowed the Legislature to set a personal income tax, but only if voters approved it via a statewide referendum and if the new revenue was used exclusively for school property tax cuts and education programs.

Which leads us to the question — how does Texas fund itself?

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11/9/19

Texas Income Tax Constitutional Amendment Passes Again

Texas has no personal income tax (one of only seven States to have this provision) and it is likely to stay that way based upon the results of Proposition Four on the recent Texas ballot.

Proposition Four, which erects an almost impossible hurdle to the enactment of a state income tax, was adopted by a  74% to 26% margin. [We have had a lot of Californians move to Texas, but 26% in favor of an income tax?] It is worth noting that a total of $3,000 was spent to support the passage of Prop 4.

What is really interesting is to see the opposition to Prop 4: The Austin American Statesman (the local mast of the Texas Communist Party), the Austin Chronicle (the mouthpiece of the Austin Socialist Party, founded in 1981, a year after I moved to ATX, by Louis Black one of the founders of SXSW), the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, the Dallas Morning News,  the Eagle, the Houston Chronicle, the Longview News-Journal,  the San Antonio Express-News, and the Waco Tribute-Herald.

The actual vote was 1,467,994 in favor of Prop 4 and 504,848 against — this in a state with 16MM registered voters shows how tenuous the electorate’s grasp is on things. 

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