Axing the Property Tax: How Plank 79 Protects Bandera Homeowners
Bandera homeowners do not own their land free and clear while the county, the school district, and every other taxing unit can raise the bill each year. The 2026 Republican Party of Texas platform answers that directly. Plank 79, “Ax the Property Tax,” calls for ending property taxes on private property — homesteads, fee-simple land, and land-patented land — through spending restraint, not a new income tax.
That is the local point. Another exemption is not the same thing as ownership.
What Plank 79 actually says
The platform does not ask Austin to swap one tax for another. Plank 79 says eliminate the property-tax system for businesses and individuals by applying fiscal discipline at every level of government, without imposing a new income tax, and with voter approval before the overall tax burden rises. It demands a transition plan that is a net tax cut, and a finish line: no property taxes collected on private property.
Leases, licenses, and permits on publicly owned land sit outside that demand. The family place, the ranch, and the homestead sit inside it.
The next plank, 80, is the stairway, not a substitute. It calls for rolling taxable values back toward 2019 certified values, a 3 percent annual cap, full homestead exemptions, and elimination within five years. It also closes the unused-increment and disaster loopholes that let levies climb after a limit is set. Plank 79 is the destination. Plank 80 is how the platform says to walk there.
This puts three of the platform’s ten core principles on a county tax bill. Principle 8 treats the right to defend your property as inalienable. Principle 4 limits government to enumerated powers. Principle 9 wants enterprise unencumbered by government interference. A tax that never sunsets, on land you already paid for, cuts against all three.
What Bandera is paying while Austin studies the price
Relief since 2025 is real, and it is incomplete. Texas voters approved a school-district homestead exemption of $140,000, up from $100,000, and a larger additional exemption for homeowners 65 and older and homeowners with a qualifying disability. Those changes lower many school bills. They do not end the tax.
The county’s own 2026 tax-rate notice shows why the platform does not stop at exemptions. It does not adopt a bill. It publishes two ceilings: a no-new-revenue rate of $0.499485 per $100, and a voter-approval rate of $0.591909 per $100. The first would raise about the same levy on property taxed in both years. The second is the highest rate the county can adopt without an election. A rate between them can go on the bill with no vote. Neither ends the tax on a homestead or a ranch. Other district bills sit on top of whatever the county adopts.
In September 2026, House Ways and Means was given a Comptroller estimate that eliminating school property taxes on homesteads would cost about $8.6 billion a year. That hearing changed no 2026 rate. Bandera’s bill is still due.
What a homeowner can do now
Read Plank 79 before you read a campaign mailer (link below). Use it when candidates file their Rule 43 platform reviews: did they support a net-tax-cut transition, or only another exemption? Ask your state representative and state senator to file the transition plan the platform already demands — spending limits, no income tax, and an end to the tax on private land. Exemptions help. They are not ownership.
Call to action: Contact your state representative and state senator. Ask them to file a Plank 79 transition plan: a net tax cut, no income tax, and no property tax on private homesteads and land.
Rep. Wes Virdell - District 53 https://www.house.texas.gov/members/53
Senator Pete Flores: District 24 https://www.senate.texas.gov/member.php?d=24
2026 Platform and Resolutions of the Republican Party of Texas
