Frisco’s city council voted to bump up the existing ad valorem homestead tax exemption by 2.5% last Tuesday.
The homestead tax exemption, which applies to homeowners and not renters, previously stood at 12.5%, Community Impact reported.
As covered by The Dallas Express, homeowners across the state have seen hefty property tax hikes. Huffines Liberty Foundation stated that tax data from the Texas Comptroller’s office reflected an increase in Texas property taxes of 12.17% from 2021 to 2022.
The increase in the market values of single-family dwellings played a significant role in the increase, with homes in the Dallas-Fort Worth area being appraised in 2023 at values between 18% and 45% more than the year before, as The Dallas Express reported.
The new tax break of roughly 15% in Frisco might incur a loss of approximately $3 million in the City’s tax collection, as Frisco’s director of budget and strategic planning Jenny Hundt said during last week’s meeting.
Council Member Bill Woodard noted that any further tax exemption increases would not be possible without more new development projects, according to Community Impact.
“If you had Frisco station all of the sudden build four or five buildings, and Fields West went up and had 15 buildings go up in a year, heck there’s a big increase in profit that’ll allow us to do more, but things don’t quite go that way,” Woodard said.
Frisco Station is a $1.8 billion mixed-use development located just north of The Star that won’t be completed until late 2024, as The Dallas Express previously reported.
Fields West, which broke ground in February, is expected to be a 55-acre corporate village with two hotels. A Universal Studios amusement park is also slated for construction nearby.
Unlike in Dallas, where a slow and burdensome building permit process culminated into a multiyear backlog under City Manager T.C. Broadnax, a building boom is seemingly unfolding in Frisco, and council members in the Collin County suburb have been attempting to shift the tax burden off of homeowners.
According to a memo from the June 20 meeting, the first tax exemption was adopted in June 2017 at a rate of 7.5%. It saw increases in 2018 and 2022.
“We are bringing large businesses, we’re bringing things like the PGA up here in order to take the taxes off the rooftops,” said Council Member Brian Livingston, according to Community Impact.
Council members will deliberate the overall tax rate in August, with early numbers from appraisal districts in Collin County and Denton County showing an increase of 12%.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks