In 2014, Von Ormy, Texas, mayor Art Martinez de Vara issued his proposed 2015 city budget, which proposed eliminating property taxes. He told the Von Ormy Star, “In 2009 we established a goal of shifting the tax burden for operating the city from property taxes towards sales taxes.  We did this because over 95% of sales taxes are paid by non-residents and we understood that we could increase sales tax revenue much faster than property tax revenue.  Since that time we have increased sales tax revenue by over 400%.  In order to have achieved the same revenue, we would have had to increase them by 300% from where we were in 2009.” He added, “I believe that government should not spend every penny it collects, rather we should spend what is necessary to deliver high quality core services to our residents.  Excess taxation is unjust taxation.”

Von Ormy was not the first town in Texas to eliminate property taxes; others included Stafford, which eliminated property taxes in 1995 as far back as 1995. The Von Orly Star reported in 2017, “The Von Ormy City Commission unanimously adopted its fiscal year 2018 budget on September 29 and maintained the city’s property tax rate at zero percent.”

Writing in the Houston Courant, Grace Watson, a legislative fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, noted that Von Ormy voted in 2015 to reduce property taxes by 10% a year, adding, “The city now gets its revenues from sales taxes, franchise fees collected from utility companies, and miscellaneous permits.” Watson also pointed out that the city retains enough funds “to fully cover maintenance and operations costs for a full year in the event of a sudden emergency” and that Niche ranked Von Ormy as the suburb with the lowest cost of living in the San Antonio area.

Read the entire article at The Daily Wire.

Image Credit: By Jericho [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons