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November 12, 2017      11:31 AM

With Straus planning his exit, the sales tax solution for Public Ed returns

But skeptics fire back “To replace school property taxes with the sales tax would require that the state roughly double the current sales tax rate” leaving Texas with “a very unbalanced tax system”

Some in the conservative wing of the Texas House continue are once again pushing a sales tax increase as the solution to the woes of rising property tax rates in this state. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was one of the earliest leaders to float the idea of substitute pennies on the Texas sales tax rate to pay for education back in 2013. By 2015, lawmakers had siphoned off “excess” sales tax for transportation.

And in 2017, Speaker Joe Straus and House leaders called on lawmakers to put more state funding into education to decrease tax bills.

Now Straus is on the way out, and conservatives have returned to the idea that the consumption tax is efficient because the taxpayer can regulate how much they pay without putting an asset like their home at risk. The Texas Public Policy Foundation, where Empower Texans Chairman Tim Dunn is Vice Chairman, convened a full day of panels this week touting a mixture of school choice and consumption taxes as the method to bring school finance under control.

By Kimberly Reeves

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