On Monday, the first day by which Texas state lawmakers could prefile legislation ahead of the 88th Legislative Session, newly elected State Senator-elect Mayes Middleton filed legislation seeking to ban the practice of taxpayer-funded lobbying. Middleton, himself a TFR Taxpayer…

Much to the chagrin of fiscal conservatives, perhaps the most significant thing to come out of the 2022 midterm elections was the overwhelming success of many bond propositions and tax rate increases on the ballot. In a country where we…

On Thursday, new Consumer Price Index (CPI) data was released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, ultimately indicating that the current historic inflation is not going away any time soon and continues to reduce the purchasing power of…

On Friday, Republican State Rep. Tony Tinderholt (Arlington) officially filed as a candidate for speaker of the Texas House, challenging incumbent Speaker Dade Phelan (Beaumont).  Tinderholt was first elected to the Texas House in 2015 and is a taxpayer champion…

Recently, Truth in Accounting released its 2022 Financial State of the States Report analyzing the financial health of all 50 states in the United States. They have released this annual report for the past 13 years. According to the report,…

Texas elected officials like to point out the economic success the state has found in the last few decades. It is true the state has an economic climate that many businesses and individuals across the world and the United States…

The Texas House Appropriations Committee met Wednesday in what is likely to be the last public hearing they have before the next legislative session, which is set to begin in January of 2023. One of the items discussed was an…

For all of Texas’ economic successes, the ever-increasing property tax burden on Texas taxpayers casts a long and dark shadow. In 2021, the Tax Foundation reported that Texas had the sixth most burdensome property tax in the United States. Just…

With only a month before the November general election, we surveyed subscribers of our weekly email, The Fiscal Note, about the issues they consider most likely to impact their decisions at the ballot box. The question posed to subscribers of…

$31 trillion. Written another way, $31,000,000,000,000. Sadly, milestones like these seem to have become all too regular. They are almost as certain as the political theatre performed by the U.S. Congress every few months over whether or not to raise…

Following a recent interim hearing of the Texas House Ways & Means Committee where they discussed several issues important to Texas taxpayers (including the potential revitalization of Chapter 313 tax abatements), we surveyed subscribers to The Fiscal Note about whether…

During the 86th legislative session in 2019, state lawmakers passed legislation related to strategic fiscal reviews of state agencies and programs, seemingly an attempt at fiscal prudence relating to the allocation of tax dollars at the state level for some…

Following a recent interim hearing of the Texas House Ways and Means Committee, where among the many issues they discussed was that of recent attempts by the Texas Legislature to reform property taxes and appraisals, we surveyed subscribers to The…

As state lawmakers prepare for the 2023 legislative session in the coming weeks, Texas taxpayers have multiple opportunities to address state lawmakers on issues like their ever-increasing property tax burdens.   Texas Senate Local Government Committee The Texas Senate Local…

As we have begun to report on local jurisdictions adopting new tax rates for the next fiscal year, it has become apparent that many around the state are failing to adopt the “no-new-revenue” tax rate. This has caused several concerned…