Does history suggest that property taxes are too high in Tarrant County? And, if so, have local decision-makers actively helped or hurt the situation?

To help answer these questions, let’s review the county’s 2024 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) and gather four types of data—i.e., tax levies, local population, total tax rates, and taxable values—over a 10-year time horizon. Using these audited estimates, we can gauge the growth of government (i.e., tax levy trends), assess its reasonability (i.e., has government grown in response to surging population?), and evaluate whether local elected officials are using their prescribed authority in the tax rate-setting process to properly balance rates and values.

To begin, we can observe that the county’s total tax levy—which may be understood as: “The sum of the maintenance and operation and debt service levies generated by applying a [governmental entity’s] adopted tax rates to its locally assessed valuation of property for the current tax year”—experienced modest growth over the last decade. In fact, from 2015 to 2024, the county’s total tax levy rose from $354.3 million to $531.6 million, equating to a 50.1% increase.

Now, on its own, this percentage change does not provide enough context to discern whether it was a reasonable or unreasonable rate of growth. For that, we must compare the decade-long growth in tax levies (+50.1%) with another value of similar significance, like population. By comparing these two metrics, it is possible to gain greater insight into the situation’s fairness.

So here’s what the data shows: In 2015, the number of county residents totaled 1,959,449. By 2024, that figure grew slightly to 2,224,584, resulting in a 14% population change for the time period.

Thus, on the one hand, the county’s main revenue source grew by 50.1% over the last 10 years. On the other hand, its population increased by just 14%.

This dynamic raises a few interesting questions, but chief among them is this—what, if anything, have Tarrant County’s elected officials done to contain or contribute to this disparity?

To explore this question, let’s consider how the county’s total tax rate and taxable values have changed. For clarification purposes, the term total tax rate refers to the sum of: “a rate for debt service payments—often called the ‘I&S rate’ or interest and sinking fund rate—and a rate for day-to-day maintenance and operations—the ‘M&O rate.’” The term taxable values can be understood as: “[t]he property value you pay taxes on.” In this case, taxable values apply on a community-wide basis, rather than on an individual level.

From 2015 to 2024, the county reduced its total tax rate by 26.3%. Simultaneously, total taxable values grew by 106.4%. Hence, rates declined noticeably while at the same time property values surged.

While it is true that county officials do not have control over property values, it is also true that “[l]ocal governments set tax rates.” This means that county officials have the discretion to adopt higher or lower tax rates to compensate for property value changes. The decision these officials make every year has a direct and obvious impact on your property tax bill.

Ideally, an “inverse relationship” exists between rates and values, meaning that as one goes up, the other should come down in relatively similar proportion. In this case, the data shows that the county’s total tax rate declined somewhat over the prior decade, but perhaps not enough to offset taxable value growth.

To be fair, these long-term trends have started to reverse in recent years. In the last 3 years in particular, Tarrant County officials have acted decisively to lower tax rates. This dramatic rate reduction is not necessarily reflected in the 10-year data since ACFR’s estimates run 1-2 years behind the current fiscal year.

However, as was reported in September 2025:

“[Fiscal year 2026] is the third consecutive year that the Republican-majority county government has cut property taxes. In a special meeting on Monday, commissioners voted 3-1 to approve property tax rates for Tarrant County and the county’s JPS Hospital System that are below the no-new-revenue rates” [emphasis mine].

The no-new-revenue (NNR) tax rate is the tax rate that would produce the same amount of tax revenue if applied to the same properties in both years. By once again adopting a rate below the NNR, county officials are effectively holding down revenues while “giving homeowners and businesses a chance to catch their breath.”

Moving forward, county leaders should continue adopting a tax rate below the NNR rate, while also eliminating wasteful spending—an approach that has resulted in “[n]early $80 million cut from the Tarrant county operating budget over 3 years.”