El Paso Matters last looked at this during the 2024 mayoral runoff, when both candidates made the claim that El Pasoans pay among the highest property taxes in the state and nation. That’s probably a commonly held view, based on social media commentary.
But it’s not true. Using 2022 data from the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization, we found that the typical El Paso County homeowner pays substantially less in property tax than their fellow Texans in large urban counties.
The Tax Foundation updated its data earlier this year with numbers from 2023. The picture is largely the same.
The median property tax bill in El Paso County in 2023 – meaning half the tax bills were higher and half were lower – was just under $3,500. That is substantially below the median property tax bill in eight of the 10 most populous counties in Texas.
The median property tax bills are lower in El Paso and Hidalgo counties – both on the U.S.-Mexico border – largely because the price of housing in those areas are well below that of other large urban centers in Texas. The Tax Foundation data shows the median home value in Travis County (Austin) is almost three times higher than El Paso and four times higher than Hidalgo County.
Border counties also have income levels well below those in other Texas urban areas. The median household income in Travis County is 65% higher than El Paso and 86% above Hidalgo County.
So, another way to compare the impact of property taxation is to calculate the percentage of the median household income in each county that is needed to pay the median property tax bill.
In this case, there’s similarity for most of the state’s major population centers. The median property tax bill is around 6% of a county’s median household income. El Paso County is on the low end of that range. Hidalgo County, where much of the population lives in unincorporated areas not subject to a city sales tax, is the one outlier.
Property taxes in Texas are higher than in most other states. That’s because Texas has long had a policy of paying for most government services at the local level, and doing so primarily through property taxes.
It’s difficult to compare Texas taxation with other states, because states vary widely in their use of taxes on income, property, consumer sales or other means. But the Tax Foundation earlier this year rated Texas seventh in its rankings of states with the most competitive tax policies.
Comparing El Paso’s property tax bills with other areas in Texas isn’t evidence of whether taxes are too high or too low. That’s a subjective decision to be made by taxpayers, and those they elect to represent them. People rarely say they are under-taxed.
But the comparison is a useful means of seeing how El Paso County stacks up against other areas of Texas.
The post There’s probably no such thing as low property taxes. But El Paso’s are lower than other big Texas cities appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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