What the propositions changed

Proposition 13 raised the homestead exemption to $140,000

It passed with 79% of the vote, the widest margin of the five. The mechanism is simple: before the school district applies its rate, it subtracts $140,000 from the appraised value of a homesteaded house instead of the $100,000 it subtracted before. The exemption is school-district only. Your county, city, hospital district and community college still tax the full value, which is why the change is worth less than the headline suggests.

You do not have to file anything if you already had a homestead exemption. Appraisal districts applied the new amount automatically. If you have never filed one, that is the single largest thing you can do about your bill, it costs nothing, and the form is a page long — see the exemptions guide.

Proposition 11 raised the over-65 and disabled exemption to $60,000

This one moved the additional school exemption for homeowners who are 65 or older, or disabled, from $10,000 to $60,000 — a six-fold increase and much the larger of the two changes in proportional terms. It stacks on top of Proposition 13, so a qualifying homeowner now has $200,000 of school-district exemption before the rate is applied.

The interaction most people miss: the over-65 exemption also carries a school tax ceiling. The year you turn 65 and file, the school portion of your bill freezes at that year’s dollar amount and cannot rise while you own the house, no matter what happens to your appraised value or the district’s rate. If you were already over 65 with a ceiling in place, SB 23 lowers the frozen amount rather than adding to it — §11.26 has the ceiling recalculated as though the larger exemption had been in force. The over-65 exemption cannot be combined with the disabled-person exemption; you take whichever is larger, and they are the same size.

The other three

Proposition 9 exempts up to $125,000 of business personal property — the equipment, tools and inventory a business is taxed on separately from its real estate. It does nothing for a homestead, but it removes the rendition burden entirely for most sole traders and small shops, which previously paid tax on a few thousand dollars of equipment and spent more than that in accounting to report it.

Proposition 10 lets the Legislature waive tax on the destroyed portion of a homestead after a fire, provided the house is uninhabitable for at least thirty days. Before it, a homeowner whose house burned in February kept paying that year’s tax on a structure that no longer existed.

Proposition 17 exempts the added value of border security infrastructure built on land along the Texas–Mexico border, so a landowner who accepts fencing, roads or surveillance equipment on their property is not taxed on the improvement.

What none of this changed

Exemptions reduce the value your bill is calculated from. They do not touch the rate, and they do not touch the appraisal. A larger exemption against a value that is too high still produces a bill that is too high, and the appraisal district reopens your value every year regardless of what the voters did.

The 10% homestead cap is also unchanged: once you have a homestead exemption, your appraised value cannot rise more than 10% a year plus the value of new improvements. That cap does more work over a decade than either proposition, and it is the reason filing the homestead exemption early matters more than filing it perfectly.

The deadline to protest is 15 May, or thirty days after your notice of appraised value arrives, whichever is later. The protest guide covers what evidence actually moves an appraisal review board.

Sources

• Texas Secretary of State, official canvass of the 4 November 2025 constitutional amendment election — all seventeen propositions approved.
• SJR 2 / SB 4 (Proposition 13) and SJR 85 / SB 23 (Proposition 11), 89th Legislature.
• Texas Tax Code §11.13 (residence homestead) and §11.26 (school tax ceiling).
• Adopted 2026 school district rates, as held in this site’s county data and used by the calculator.