Three Texas legislative hearings on your property taxes were posted for the first half of September. The one charged with studying further tax cuts — including the idea of freezing school taxes for homeowners at 55 instead of 65 — was canceled.

Nothing on this calendar changes your 2026 tax bill. But interim hearings are where the evidence for the 2027 session gets built, and right now the Senate and the House are aiming at very different targets. Here is what was canceled, what is still happening, and how a homeowner can actually get on the record.

What was canceled

The Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Sen. Joan Huffman, had posted a public hearing for 10:00 a.m. Wednesday, September 2, 2026, in Room E1.036. The notice on the Legislature’s own site has been reposted as a revision and now carries a single line across the top of the agenda: ** MEETING CANCELED **.

The charge it was going to take up, quoted in full from the notice:

Further Property Tax Cuts: The Homestead Exemption has proven overwhelmingly popular with voters. It has eliminated school property taxes for the average senior and reduced school taxes in half for those under 65. Study and report on the effect of the continued increasing of the Homestead Exemption. Assess the impact of reducing the senior homestead exemption from 65 to 55 years of age. This change would freeze home values 10 years sooner for over 3 million homeowners, saving 55 plus homeowners thousands of additional dollars.

That was the only property-tax item on the agenda, and it was the committee’s only property-tax hearing of the interim. Senate Finance met twice in 2026 before this — July 27 and July 28 — and neither agenda touched property taxes. Those hearings covered transportation funding, rural volunteer fire department grants, the sales-tax exemption for data centers, crime victims’ compensation, higher-education financial transparency, and fraud, waste and abuse at state agencies.

As of September 4, the committee’s posted meeting list shows no replacement date. September 2 is still the last entry on it, marked “Canceled/see notice.”

One detail worth noticing

The canceled Finance hearing was noticed to hear “invited and public testimony,” with public testimony limited to two minutes. As you will see below, the two Senate hearings that survived are noticed for invited testimony only. The hearing that got cut is the one where an ordinary homeowner had a slot at the microphone.

Read the charge carefully — those are claims, not findings

The language in that charge is the committee’s own characterization in a meeting notice. It is not a study, a fiscal note, or a finding, and it should not be read as one.

Two things are worth separating. An exemption removes value from taxation — Texas Tax Code § 11.13 is what took the school homestead exemption to $140,000, and to $200,000 for homeowners 65 and older. A freeze (a tax ceiling) is different: it caps the school tax dollars on a qualifying homestead so they generally cannot rise as the home’s value does. Lowering the freeze age from 65 to 55 would not hand anyone a bigger exemption. It would lock in their school tax bill a decade earlier.

The “over 3 million homeowners” figure is the notice’s own assertion. We could not locate an independent estimate behind it, and no bill has been filed. This remains a proposal for the 2027 session — nothing more.

What did go ahead: Senate Local Government

The Senate Committee on Local Government, chaired by Sen. Paul Bettencourt, met twice the same week in Room E1.016, on September 1 and 2, and both notices are still posted.

Tuesday, September 1, 1:00 p.m. took up two charges that matter directly to homeowners:

Examining the Effect of Increasing the Homestead Exemption. The charge names the whole statutory lineage — SB 4 and SB 23 of the 89th Legislature, SB 2 from the 88th (2nd Called Session), SB 1 from the 87th (3rd Called Session), SB 2 from the 86th, and SB 1 from the 84th — which “in combination have increased the homeowners’ school tax exemption from $15,000 to $140,000 for those under the age of 65, and from $25,000 to $200,000 for those 65 and older.” It then directs the committee to “identify the percentage of Texas homeowners that no longer pay school property taxes due to these efforts.”
Ensuring Transparency in Appraisal District Funding. A study of “the governance, budgeting authority, and cost allocation practices of county appraisal districts,” the fiscal impact of appraisal-district costs on taxing entities, and whether “additional guardrails are warranted.”

That first question is not academic, and it is not hypothetical. When we examined the districts that called tax-rate elections for the November 3, 2026 ballot, the sharpest finding was in Ysleta ISD in El Paso County, where an analysis of appraisal-district data found that more than 26,000 homeowners — about two-thirds of owner-occupied homes in the district — owe no school tax at all, because their exemptions exceed their taxable value or they are 100% disabled veterans. The Legislature is now formally asking how big that group is statewide. There is no verified statewide number yet; that is the point of the charge.

Wednesday, September 2, 9:00 a.m. moved to housing-affordability legislation and to “Holding Local Government Fees Accountable” — utility connection charges, permit and inspection fees, drainage and stormwater fees — and whether independent audits of those fees should be required. That is adjacent to the audit law that can already freeze a city’s tax rate.

Both notices said the committee would “hear invited testimony.” Neither carried the two-minute public-testimony paragraph that appeared on the canceled Finance notice. Written testimony was accepted — 20 copies to the committee clerk, plus a digital copy by email — and the committee’s posted witness lists and minutes, once they appear, will show who was actually heard.

The House just posted its first property-tax hearing of the interim — and it is asking a different question

This is the development almost nobody has noticed. The House Committee on Ways & Means, chaired by Rep. Morgan Meyer, has posted a public hearing for 10:00 a.m. Tuesday, September 15, 2026, in Room E2.014 (the notice has since been revised with a room change; the original posting listed E2.012). According to the committee’s meeting list, its previous posted meeting was August 22, 2025 — this is its first of the interim.

Its agenda points somewhere else entirely:

Monitoring two enacted laws. HB 103, which creates a statewide database of taxing-unit bond, tax and bond-project information and carries a civil penalty, and HB 148, on the qualification, training and education of appraisal district board members. Both were signed by the Governor on June 20, 2025 and took effect September 1, 2025.
Property Tax Relief. Review “the cost and benefits of compressing school district tax rates and increasing the homestead exemption” — that is, weighing the two approaches against each other rather than assuming one — plus “whether the property tax appraisal system is working as intended,” and the economic performance of the state revenue that pays for ongoing relief.
Local Government Spending. Examine local spending and debt practices “including the use of certificates of obligation,” evaluate other revenue sources such as fees, and make recommendations for “limiting the growth of local government spending.”
Agency Oversight of the Multistate Tax Commission and the Comptroller of Public Accounts.

Certificates of obligation are worth flagging: unlike the bond propositions that set the I&S half of a school tax rate, certificates of obligation can be issued by a city or county without a vote in most circumstances. A committee charge aimed at them is aimed at local debt that homeowners never got to approve.

Two chambers, two diagnoses

Line the charges up and the split is hard to miss.

Senate Finance (canceled)	House Ways & Means (Sept 15)
Keep increasing the homestead exemption	Weigh exemption increases against rate compression on cost and benefit
Lower the school-tax freeze age from 65 to 55	Ask whether the appraisal system is working as intended
Framed as further relief for homeowners	Framed as limiting local government spending, debt and fees

The Senate charge treats the remedy as more state-funded relief. The House charge treats the problem as local spending growth and a possibly malfunctioning appraisal system. Both are aimed at the 2027 session. Neither is law, and neither is a bill yet.

It matters which framing wins, because the two paths cost different people different money. Raising the school homestead exemption again shifts more of the school funding load onto the state’s general revenue — the same school finance machinery that has to be backfilled every time an exemption goes up. Capping local spending shifts the fight to city halls and county commissioners courts in Harris, Bexar, Tarrant and Travis counties instead.

What this changes on your 2026 bill: nothing

Be clear about this. An interim hearing produces a report, not a tax cut. Your 2026 bill is being set right now by the local taxing units adopting rates under Texas Tax Code Chapter 26 — the adoption deadline is the later of September 30 or the 60th day after the certified appraisal roll arrives — and by the exemptions already in law.

If you want to affect what you owe this year, the rate votes happening this summer and fall are where that happens, along with the tax-rate and bond questions on the November 3 ballot in districts across Collin, Brazos and other counties.

How to actually get on the record

House Ways & Means, Sept 15. This is the open door. Public testimony is limited to two minutes. Written testimony and handouts go to the committee clerk by September 10. Texas residents can submit electronic comments on any agenda item — including “Property Tax Relief” and “Local Government Spending” — without appearing in person, at comments.house.texas.gov, until the hearing adjourns. The hearing streams at house.texas.gov.
Senate Local Government, Sept 1 and 2. Already held, invited testimony only. Watch the committee’s meeting page for the witness lists and any follow-up hearing.
Senate Finance. There is currently nothing to show up to. Watch the committee’s meeting page for a rescheduled notice.
Check your own county. Find your county’s adopted rates and appraisal district on our county pages, and verify anything specific to your property with your appraisal district.

What we could not verify

Stating this plainly, because it matters:

Why the Senate Finance hearing was canceled. The revised notice gives no reason, and we found no news coverage or statement explaining it.
Whether it will be rescheduled, and when. No replacement notice is posted as of September 4, 2026.
The “over 3 million homeowners” figure and the claims that the exemption “eliminated school property taxes for the average senior” and halved them for those under 65. These are the committee notice’s own characterizations. We found no independent estimate supporting them and are not asserting them as fact.
The statewide share of homeowners who no longer owe school property taxes. No verified statewide figure exists — that is precisely what the Senate Local Government charge asks the committee to determine.
Whether the Senate Local Government hearings will take public testimony in practice despite being noticed for invited testimony only.

Sources

How to Protest Your Taxes → Find Your County

Texas Property Tax Hearings: The One That Got Canceled