hen Texas State Sen. Paul Bettencourt took his seat at the panel focused on tax laws, he did so having finally achieved a long-sought success: property tax reform. “We were chasing New Jersey to be the highest tax rate in the nation. We decided to pull out and let Illinois and New Jersey stay Nos. 1 and 2,” said Bettencourt. “We’re actually going to start reducing our tax rate next year.” To understand how necessary the solution was, one must first understand the impact of the problem. To highlight it, Bettencourt cited the Harris County Appraisal District. “For almost all the major business properties, there’s actually a model of your property, specifically if you’re on income and you’re multi-tenant,” he explained. “They’ll actually estimate your income and your expenses. They’ll do a reconciliation of their models, and then they do quality control before they send out the value notices. “ Click to read more at www.rednews.com.