Brent Bennett, Ph.D., is the policy director for Life:Powered, an initiative of the Texas Public Policy Foundation to raise America’s energy IQ.
The Legislature should focus on eliminating school district maintenance and operations (M&O) taxes for all Texans, rather than focusing on tax breaks that will only benefit a few businesses. We’ve presented our plan to buy down M&O taxes to this committee several times over the years and continue to stand by that approach. Getting rid of these taxes will largely obviate the need for replacing Chapter 313 and can be done quickly enough to give companies confidence that they can continue to invest in Texas. Targeted tax breaks for certain businesses runs opposite to this goal by shifting the tax burden onto a smaller base of taxpayers.