An Editorial by "The Dallas Morning News," back in Late August of this year makes an argument that the city of Dallas should unite with the city of Austin in suing the state of Texas over "unfair taxation." The Texas capital (along with other cities such as Dallas and Fort-Worth) insist that there is a disproportional strain in taxes between residential and commercial property owners. It's believed that commercial property owners are benefitting from a state law that allows "equity appeals," ignoring actual market value and instead are based on whether similar properties pay lower taxes. Implying that commercial property owners can suggest to being taxed the value of similar properties instead of what it's actually worth.

After reading this editorial piece by "The Dallas Morning News," and carefully analyzing their words carefully, I have to say that I both agree and disagree with the dispute that they are trying to make. Unfortunately, because I have no prior knowledge in the difference between taxing commercial and residential properties, I can only manage to make a weak opinion for myself with the limited amount of information.

Reasons why I agree: When it comes to taxes, it seems that local, state, and even national government tend to favor businesses over homeowners. Because there are so many appraisal districts out in the world, any number of them are more then willing to fight to prevent from having to turn over sales prices of commercial transactions to the public, (for the right price of course) making it nearly impossible to receive accurate sales data. If the commercial property owners had nothing to hide, and were following the Texas constitution's "promise that taxation should be equal and uniform,"  they wouldn't feel it necessary to hide their data.

Reasons why I disagree: I don't believe that changing the state law that allows "equity appeals" will enable local governments the ability to lower tax rates and ease the minds of tax payers, for taxes are capped at an eight percent increase in revenue per year. Even though this occurs, tax payers already have the ability to demand elections that can rollback rates. Homeowners also have the right given by the Texas constitution to also use the equal and uniform rules to lower the value on their homes if they so choose to.

I guess it just all depends on which side you are coming from, and how high or low residents are being taxed, and whether or not they are willing to stand up and speak on behalf of themselves and their homes.