From Ballot to Handoff: How the Texas Property Tax Replacement Plan Actually Gets Done
From Ballot to Handoff: How the Texas Property Tax Replacement Plan Actually Gets Done
The arithmetic is settled and the bills are written. This is the execution plan — every step, every date, and every safeguard, from the day the resolution is filed to the day the transition board turns out the lights.
Why Execution Is the Hard Part
The math was never the obstacle. The handoff is.
Most tax reform proposals die in the gap between a good idea and a working government. The arithmetic gets checked, the speeches get made, and then somebody asks the question nobody prepared for: on the morning after this passes, who sends the bill, who collects the money, who pays the bondholders, and who is accountable when a school district comes up short in March?
Those questions have answers here, and the answers are written into the instruments themselves rather than left to a future legislature's good intentions. That is what this article covers. It is not an explanation of what the plan does — the tax base, the rates, the household exemptions, and the fund system each have their own published analysis. This is the execution plan: the sequence, the dates, the responsible party at each step, and what happens if a step fails.
There are three structural commitments that shape everything below, and they are worth stating before the timeline starts.
Relief and replacement are one quarter apart. The final property tax bill is paid in January 2028. The replacement tax begins collecting on April 1, 2028. There is no year in which a Texan pays both, and no year in which a city, county, or school district is funded by neither.
Nothing is left to a later session's discretion. Every citizen protection — the prohibition on property taxes, the rate ceiling, the voter-approval requirement, the bond guarantee, the surplus return — is written into the Constitution, where a simple legislative majority cannot reach it. The mechanics that need to flex over time are in statute. That division is deliberate and it is the reason the plan is eight instruments instead of one.
The transition apparatus is built to expire. The board that manages the changeover has a six-year constitutional lifespan that the Legislature cannot extend, is exempt from the ordinary sunset-review process that keeps temporary agencies alive indefinitely, and can dissolve itself early if it finishes early. What survives after the transition is the permanent system, not a permanent transition bureaucracy.
The Eight Instruments, and Why They Move Together
One constitutional amendment and seven implementing acts, filed as a package.
The plan is not a bill. It is a constitutional amendment plus seven statutes, and each one does a job the others cannot do. The amendment abolishes property taxation and establishes the protections. The statutes make the new system operable. Filed separately and passed piecemeal, they would produce a half-built system. Filed together, each is a load-bearing wall.
| Instrument | Vehicle | Its one job |
|---|---|---|
| Constitutional amendment (H.J.R.) | Joint resolution — two-thirds of each chamber, then the voters | Abolishes ad valorem taxation, creates the tiered rate structure and every citizen protection |
| Sales and Use Tax Act | Statute | Imposes the tax, sets the starting rates, governs how rates may change |
| Texas Living Exemption Set Act | Statute | Exempts the twelve categories of essential household spending |
| Remote Seller and Foreign Entity Act | Statute | Nexus, registration, and market access for out-of-state and foreign sellers |
| Bond Management Act | Statute | Replaces the property tax bond levy with the Bond Service Levy and its reserve |
| Fund System Act | Statute | Establishes the entity fund system and the surplus waterfall |
| Transition Board Act | Statute — Government Code Ch. 490 | Creates the transition board, the transition fund, and the permanent monitoring division |
| Tax Abolition and Conformity Act | Statute | Repeals the abolished taxes and sweeps every conforming cross-reference |
The provision that makes delay useless
There is one clause in the amendment that matters more than any other to a legislator weighing whether this is realistic. The amendment requires the Legislature to enact the implementing laws during the 2027 regular session. Then it addresses what happens if the Legislature does not.
If the Legislature fails to enact implementing legislation before the Implementation Date, the tier rates certified by the comptroller take effect on that date by operation of this constitution.Constitutional amendment, temporary provisions, Sec. 9.01(d)
The relevant constitutional sections are self-executing to the extent necessary to give the amendment effect. Once the voters approve it, the plan cannot be quietly strangled by a future session that declines to pass the follow-on bills. The property tax still ends. The replacement tax still turns on at rates the comptroller has already certified. Inaction is not a veto.
Every major tax reform faces the same quiet threat: pass the popular part, then stall the machinery until the whole thing collapses and gets repealed as unworkable. That option does not exist here. The only body that can stop this plan after November 2027 is the electorate that started it.
Getting to the Floor, and Through It
Coalition work now; the 90th Legislature, January to May 2027.
Before the session
The package is being circulated to members now, ahead of the 2026 general election, for authors, joint authors, and Senate sponsors. That is deliberate and worth saying plainly: the goal is for this resolution to reach the floor on its merits whether or not any particular candidate wins a particular race. A plan that depends on one member is not a plan.
Pre-filing for the 90th Legislature opens Monday, November 9, 2026, the first Monday after the general election, under House Rule 8, Section 7 1. The Legislature convenes at noon on Tuesday, January 12, 2027 2.
The deadline most people miss
A constitutional amendment is filed as a joint resolution, and joint resolutions are subject to the same sixty-day filing deadline as ordinary bills. House Rule 8, Section 8(a) provides that after the first sixty calendar days of a regular session, a bill or joint resolution requires a four-fifths vote of the members present just to be introduced. The rules manual carries a House precedent from 1955 confirming that this applies to joint resolutions specifically 3. Only local bills, emergency appropriations, and matters the Governor designates as emergencies are exempt.
The resolution and its companion acts must be filed within the first sixty calendar days of the session. Missing that window does not kill the plan, but it converts a simple filing into a four-fifths procedural vote before debate can even begin. The work that makes this deadline achievable happens in 2026, not 2027.
Committee, and honest expectations about the text
Once filed, the resolution and the seven acts go to committee for hearings, public testimony, and revision, and to the Texas Legislative Council for drafting review. The goal is to keep the filed instruments as close to the published text as possible. The realistic expectation is that adjustments will be made — cross-references tightened, definitions sharpened, conforming amendments added — before anything reaches a floor vote.
That is how it should work, and it is worth being candid about it rather than pretending a package this large arrives perfect. What must survive committee is the architecture: the constitutional prohibition, the rate ceiling, the voter-approval requirement, the household exemptions, the bond guarantee, and the transition structure. The drafting can and should be refined.
The Ballot, November 2, 2027
What voters see, and the machinery that puts it in front of them.
Article XVII, Section 1(a) provides that "the date of the elections shall be specified by the Legislature" 4. The date is written into the resolution itself, which means no separate action is required to get the amendment on a 2027 ballot — passing the resolution does it. The resolution specifies November 2, 2027, the November uniform election date for that year under Election Code Section 41.001(a)(3) 8.
Between passage and election day, a fixed sequence of notice requirements runs. None of it is discretionary and all of it is somebody else's job, but a plan that ignores it is not a plan.
| Requirement | Responsible party | Deadline | Authority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prepare the brief explanatory statement | Secretary of State | Before publication | Art. XVII, Sec. 1(b) |
| Approve the explanatory statement | Attorney General | Before publication | Art. XVII, Sec. 1(b) |
| Certify proposition wording and number to each county | Secretary of State | 68th day before election day | Election Code Sec. 274.003(b) |
| First newspaper publication statewide | Secretary of State, by contract | 50 to 60 days before | Art. XVII, Sec. 1(b) |
| Second newspaper publication | Secretary of State, by contract | Same day, following week | Art. XVII, Sec. 1(b) |
| Post full text in the county courthouse | Each county clerk | At least 30 days before | Art. XVII, Sec. 1(b) |
| Draw ballot order if multiple amendments | Secretary of State | Public drawing, 72-hour notice | Election Code Sec. 274.002 |
| Election day | Texas voters | November 2, 2027 | Resolution, Sec. 10.01 |
We write the ballot language
Election Code Section 274.001 provides that the Secretary of State prescribes the wording of the proposition only if the Legislature fails to do so 9. The resolution prescribes it. That means the sentence voters read in the booth is drafted by the authors of the plan, not summarized by an agency afterward, and it is already written:
"The constitutional amendment known as the Texas Property Tax Replacement Plan: abolishing all property taxes and the franchise tax in Texas, abolishing the state and local taxes on fuel, vehicles, insurance, hotels, beverages, tobacco, and utilities, and replacing all of them with a single sales and use tax capped at six percent; requiring voter approval before any government in Texas may raise its rate, impose any new tax, or borrow money; guaranteeing every outstanding government bond; requiring reserve, infrastructure, and first responder funds; and returning surplus collections to citizens."
Ratification requires a simple majority of votes cast, not a supermajority. The county returning officers report to the Secretary of State, and if a majority favors the amendment, it "shall become a part of this Constitution, and proclamation thereof shall be made by the Governor" 4.
The Last Property Tax Bill, January 2028
Tax year 2027 is the final ad valorem year, and it does double duty.
Tax year 2027 is the last year in which any government in Texas levies a property tax. Bills go out in the fall of 2027 exactly as they always have, and they come due on the ordinary January 31, 2028 deadline. That payment is the last property tax payment in Texas.
For most homeowners this is the only date in the whole plan that matters. It is thirteen months after the vote. It is not a phase-down, a cap, a freeze, or a credit. The bill that arrives in the fall of 2027 is the final one.
A tax lawfully assessed for a year ending before the switch-on remains due, collectible, and enforceable, together with penalty and interest, and the lien securing it stays valid until the tax is paid or discharged. Ending property taxation going forward does not forgive what was already owed — though, as Section 8 explains, the Legislature is given express authority to deal with old delinquencies precisely because no bondholder depends on them.
The final year is also the measuring year
Those 2027 collections do a second job. They are the basis on which the comptroller computes each taxing entity's Final Year Baseline — the number that defines what that entity was actually receiving before the change, and therefore the number every later question about shortfall and assistance is measured against.
The Baseline is not just property tax. For each entity it is the sum of everything that entity loses: its final-year property tax collections, its final-year sales and use tax collections, its share of every other tax the plan abolishes, and, for a school district, its Foundation School Program entitlement plus every other form of state funding it received that year. Getting this number right for every entity in Texas is the single largest administrative task in the transition.
The Preparation Quarter, January to March 2028
Two workstreams running in parallel, with a hard finish line.
The amendment takes effect on January 1, 2028, but on that date nothing is collected and nothing is abolished. Its effect is to authorize and require the Legislature's implementing laws and to start the clock. The first quarter of 2028 is a runway, and it has a work schedule.
Workstream one: systems, permits, and compliance
This is the unglamorous half, and it is the half that determines whether April 1 goes smoothly. It runs across the comptroller's office and every taxing entity and seller in the state.
- The comptroller reconfigures collection, allocation, and distribution systems for the tiered structure, and stands up the public transparency portal that carries rates, collections, distributions, reserve balances, and enforcement actions for every entity.
- Every seller updates or obtains a sales and use tax permit, including the category certification that identifies what the business sells and the residential-versus-commercial customer accounting that makes the household exemptions operative at the register.
- Point-of-sale systems and tax engines update to the new rate structure — a process Texas sellers already perform on a quarterly cadence for local rate changes.
- Taxing entities establish their required funds, conform their budgets, and onboard to the disclosure feed.
- Special districts receive their tier assignments, including the rerouting of districts whose service areas do not match their original classification.
- The comptroller issues every entity's Final Year Baseline certification, along with its total replacement obligation, tier classification, initial maintenance-and-operations and interest-and-sinking rates, and its required reserve balances.
Workstream two: the board stands up
The Transition Board is constituted on January 2, 2028, the day after the amendment takes effect. Three sitting statewide officers — the Comptroller of Public Accounts, the Attorney General, and the State Auditor — take their oaths and hold a first meeting with a quorum. That date starts the six-year sunset clock. They serve as full-time officers for this purpose, draw on their existing departmental budgets, receive no separate compensation, and act by a two-of-three quorum.
During the preparation quarter the board is planning and coordinating, not disbursing. It executes coordination agreements with the comptroller, the Bond Review Board, the Texas Education Agency, the Texas Water Development Board, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and the governor's economic development office. It handles special district tier assignment and the expedited track for very small entities. It builds the assistance intake process so that it is ready to run the moment real numbers exist.
The board's job is to close the gap between what an entity used to collect and what it now collects. Neither figure is real until the Baseline is certified and the first distributions land. Standing the board up in January and giving it a quarter to organize before the data arrives is not idle time — it is the only window in which it can build the machinery without simultaneously operating it.
Switch-On: April 1, 2028
Four things happen at once, and the first distributions follow at the end of the quarter.
April 1, 2028 is not a sequence of steps. It is a single switch, and four things happen the moment it is thrown.
- Collections begin. The tiered sales and use tax starts collecting at the starting rates, on the standard remittance schedule every Texas seller already uses. No new filing calendar, no new return.
- Property taxation ends. The constitutional prohibition becomes operative. No taxing entity in Texas may levy, assess, or collect an ad valorem tax for any period beginning on or after that date.
- The abolished state taxes end. The franchise tax and the state taxes on motor fuels, oil and gas production, motor vehicle sales, insurance premiums, hotel occupancy, alcoholic beverages, tobacco, utility gross receipts, and coin-operated machines are abolished, along with their local counterparts.
- Local sales taxes are absorbed. Every existing local sales tax is superseded and its rate folded into the tier rate of the entity that imposed it, so that no transaction is ever subject to both the old local tax and the new one.
Two structural changes ride along on the same date. The Foundation School Program and the excess local revenue recapture system — Robin Hood — are superseded and have no further force, though a recapture payment attributable to a tax year ending before the switch-on remains due under prior law. And bond debt service moves to the Bond Service Levy, which is never conditioned on collecting a delinquent property tax.
What does not change on April 1
This list matters more to constituents than the previous one.
- Every city, county, school district, and special district still exists.
- Every service still runs. Police, fire, EMS, water, roads, and schools operate without interruption.
- Every voter-approved bond is still paid, from a dedicated levy that cannot be suspended.
- Every school opens, every teacher is employed, and every district keeps its own funding inside its own boundaries.
- Every public employee still has a job, including at the appraisal districts, which continue operating through their wind-down period.
End of Q2: the first distributions
Collections remitted during the second quarter are allocated and distributed at the end of it. That is the moment the system proves itself: entities receive their first revenue under the new structure, the comptroller reports actual collections to the Transition Board, and the Transition Fund begins capitalizing from collections above baseline.
From that point the plan is fully in place and running on its own revenue. Everything after is management.
Between the January 2028 property tax payment and the first sales tax distribution at the end of June 2028, entities are operating on their final-year property tax collections, which are expressly authorized for use during the transition. The plan does not ask a single government in Texas to run a quarter with no money.
The Six-Year Transition
How surplus is pooled, who qualifies for help, and what winds down.
The transition period is not a grace period during which the rules are suspended. The new system is fully operative from April 1, 2028. What the transition does is pool the system's own early surplus to carry the entities that come up short while their tax base matures, and then step that pooling down until it disappears.
The surplus capture steps down and ends
| Period | Treatment of above-baseline collections | Who decides |
|---|---|---|
| First year | All collections above an entity's Final Year Baseline transfer to the Transition Fund at each quarterly distribution | Automatic |
| Second year | Up to 50 percent of above-baseline surplus may be captured, waived in whole or in part, or captured tier-selectively | Board vote, on certified data, published on the portal |
| Third year onward | No capture. The full surplus waterfall governs every entity's surplus | Each entity's own governing body |
The logic is straightforward. In year one the state does not yet know which entities are genuinely short and which merely look short on projections, so it pools everything above baseline and finds out. In year two it has real data and can dial the capture back or switch it off. By year three the pooling ends permanently and surplus goes where it belongs — to the entity's reserves, its infrastructure and first responder funds, and then back to the citizens who paid it.
Who qualifies for help
The obvious objection is that a transition fund is a bailout fund for badly run governments. The eligibility standard is written to make that impossible, and it is written into the Constitution rather than left to the board's judgment.
An entity qualifies for assistance only if all of the following are true:
- It is already imposing its maximum available rate, its voters having approved a rate at the constitutional cap applicable to its tier.
- Its collections at that rate, as certified by the comptroller, still fall short of its Final Year Baseline.
- It is in compliance with the total budget cap, the cumulative budget growth cap, the public disclosure requirements, and the fund requirements.
An entity whose voters have rejected a proposed rate increase is ineligible until its voters approve one. And the anti-waiver provision is absolute: neither the board nor its successor may waive, reduce, or substitute for any of these requirements, or provide assistance that has the effect of supplying revenue the voters declined to authorize.
A government whose own voters said no does not get made whole by the state. It reduces its budget.The rule, in one sentence
There is one deliberate carve-out. Economic development assistance — the work of building a permanent transaction base in a jurisdiction that does not have one — is available to an entity that meets the compliance requirements whether or not it has yet exhausted its rate. That is not a backfill; it is the difference between subsidizing a shortfall forever and fixing the reason the shortfall exists.
The appraisal districts wind down
Appraisal districts, appraisal review boards, and county assessor-collectors do not vanish on switch-on day. They continue for as long as necessary, not to exceed three years, to finish collecting the final-year taxes and to resolve every protest, appeal, and lawsuit pending on that date. Then each appraisal district is abolished, and the Legislature provides for the disposition of its records, assets, liabilities, and employees.
Because bond payments are funded from the Bond Service Levy and no bondholder interest depends on old property tax collections, the Legislature is given express authority to abate, discharge, compromise, or continue collecting outstanding delinquencies and to release the liens securing them, including liens on residence homesteads. A discharge does not entitle anyone to a refund of a tax already paid.
The Handoff, and the Early Exit
The board is built to put itself out of business.
Six years after it is constituted, the Transition Board dissolves by operation of law. Its term may not be extended by statute. It is expressly not subject to the ordinary sunset review process under Chapter 325 of the Government Code — which matters, because that process is the mechanism by which temporary state bodies routinely become permanent ones. The Legislature may provide for the continued administration of specific obligations lawfully incurred before termination, but it may not continue the board.
The Transition Fund terminates with it, and any unexpended and unobligated balance transfers to the Economic Stabilization Fund.
The board does not have to run out the clock. If every eligible taxing entity reaches self-sufficiency before the sunset date, the board may dissolve early on a unanimous vote of all three members, supported by a comptroller certification that every eligible entity is self-sufficient and every lawfully incurred obligation is under active management by a designated successor. Finishing early is not a failure of the board's mission. It is the mission.
What takes over
A permanent Transition Monitoring Division inside the comptroller's office is built during the transition and succeeds to the board's functions when the board ends. It does not expire. On the handoff it assumes, on a permanent basis:
- Continuing evaluation of the revenue sufficiency and self-sufficiency of every taxing entity in Texas.
- Administration of assistance to entities that meet the same eligibility standard, funded by appropriation from the Economic Stabilization Fund.
- Deployment of economic development programs and financing tools in shortfall jurisdictions to build a permanent tax base.
- Apportionment of the shared cap among overlapping multi-region special districts.
- Recommendations on absorption, annexation, consolidation, or dissolution of an entity that cannot be made self-sustaining — subject in every case to the voter-approval protections.
The division reports to the Legislature and the Governor for at least two years after the handoff and maintains ongoing monitoring thereafter. It publishes an annual public report measuring every taxing entity against the seven constitutional performance criteria: protection from crime, access to justice, economic security, enforcement of the laws, first responder readiness, infrastructure sufficient to sustain life and commerce, and fiscal discipline in accomplishing all of it within the entity's own revenue.
No entity is left without a remedy because the board ended. That is stated expressly, and it is the provision that makes the sunset safe.
When the transition provisions expire, what remains is not a transition apparatus. It is a permanent constitutional structure: no property tax, a capped rate that no government can raise without its own voters' approval, guaranteed bonds, required reserves, surplus returned to citizens, and one permanent office watching whether any of it stops working.
If Something Goes Wrong
Seven failure modes, and the provision that already handles each one.
A plan that only describes success is a brochure. These are the seven ways this could break, and what the instruments do about each.
The Legislature stalls on the implementing bills
The comptroller-certified tier rates take effect by operation of the Constitution, and the relevant constitutional sections are self-executing to the extent necessary. The property tax still ends and the replacement still turns on.
An entity's collections come up short
If it is at its voter-approved maximum rate and in compliance, it qualifies for supplemental assistance and bridge financing from the Transition Fund, and for economic development work aimed at fixing the base rather than subsidizing the gap indefinitely.
An entity's voters reject a rate increase
The entity reduces its budget. It becomes ineligible for assistance until its voters approve an increase, and no state body may supply the revenue the voters declined. This is the mechanism that keeps the plan from becoming a blank check.
A recession hits during the transition
Every entity maintains a stabilization reserve with a six-month minimum balance. The state's Economic Stabilization Fund serves as the state-level stabilization reserve with its own minimum, and a tiered disaster cascade governs how costs are absorbed in a declared emergency.
A bond payment is at risk
The Bond Service Levy is never suspended — not for fiscal distress, not for a late report, not for anything. Behind it sits the entity's interest-and-sinking reserve fund, a shortfall backstop cascade, and the guarantee of the State of Texas. Voter-approved debt is the one thing in the system with no discretionary off switch.
An entity's certification is wrong
Arbitration facilitated by the board, then district court in Travis County. The switch-on is not stayed, and a corrected certification is applied retroactively.
A government simply ignores the rules
Every Texas citizen has constitutional standing to bring an original action in district court to enforce these provisions, with an expedited hearing and attorney's fees recoverable against a government that violates them. Enforcement does not depend on an agency choosing to act.
The Complete Timeline
Every milestone from pre-filing to handoff, on one page.
This is the whole plan in one table. It is the page to keep in front of you during a committee hearing or a town hall.
| Date | Milestone | Who acts | Phase |
|---|---|---|---|
| Now – Nov. 2026 | Package circulated for authors, joint authors, and Senate sponsors | Members and members-elect | Coalition |
| Nov. 9, 2026 | Pre-filing opens for the 90th Legislature | Members and members-elect | Coalition |
| Jan. 12, 2027 | 90th Legislature convenes at noon | Legislature | Session |
| By the 60th day | Resolution and companion acts filed, avoiding the four-fifths introduction vote | Authors | Session |
| Spring 2027 | Committee hearings, Legislative Council drafting review, floor votes | Legislature | Session |
| By May 31, 2027 | Resolution passes both chambers by two-thirds; seven acts pass by majority | Legislature | Session |
| Aug. – Oct. 2027 | Explanatory statement, ballot certification, statewide publication, courthouse posting | Secretary of State, Attorney General, county clerks | Ballot |
| Nov. 2, 2027 | Voters ratify the amendment by simple majority; Governor proclaims | Texas voters | Ballot |
| Fall 2027 | Final property tax bills issued for tax year 2027 | Taxing entities | Final tax year |
| Jan. 2028 | Last property tax payment in Texas | Property owners | Final tax year |
| Jan. 1, 2028 | Amendment takes effect; implementing laws authorized and required | Constitution | Preparation |
| Jan. 2, 2028 | Transition Board constituted; six-year sunset clock begins | Comptroller, Attorney General, State Auditor | Preparation |
| Jan. – Mar. 2028 | Systems reconfigured, permits updated, portal live, compliance in place | Comptroller, entities, sellers | Preparation |
| Q1 2028 | Final Year Baseline certified for every entity; contest window opens | Comptroller | Preparation |
| Apr. 1, 2028 | Collections begin; property taxation ends; abolished taxes end; local sales taxes absorbed | All | Switch-on |
| End of Q2 2028 | First distributions; actuals reported; Transition Fund begins capitalizing | Comptroller, Transition Board | Switch-on |
| Year 1 | All above-baseline collections pooled to the Transition Fund | Comptroller | Transition |
| Year 2 | Capture of up to half of above-baseline surplus, or waived, by board vote | Transition Board | Transition |
| Year 3 onward | No capture; the full surplus waterfall governs | Each entity | Transition |
| Within 3 years | Final-year collections completed, protests resolved, appraisal districts abolished | Appraisal districts, Legislature | Wind-down |
| Any time, if ready | Early dissolution on unanimous board vote and comptroller certification | Transition Board | Handoff |
| Jan. 2, 2034 | Board dissolves by operation of law; Monitoring Division takes over permanently | Comptroller | Handoff |
From the first day of pre-filing in November 2026 to the transition board's handoff in January 2034 is a little over seven years. Within that, the part a Texas family actually experiences is much shorter: the vote in November 2027, the last tax bill in January 2028, and the new system running by that summer. Everything after is government cleaning up after itself, on a clock it cannot extend.
References
Sources organized by article section. APA 7th Edition. Primary and official Texas government sources only.
Legislative Procedure and Session Calendar — Section 3
1. Texas House of Representatives. (2025). Rules of the House of Representatives, 89th Legislature (adopted January 23, 2025). https://www.house.texas.gov/pdfs/resources/House-Rules.pdf
Rule 8, Section 7 establishes that pre-filing opens "the first Monday after the general election preceding the next regular legislative session." Rule 8, Section 8(a) establishes the sixty-calendar-day introduction deadline and the four-fifths vote required after it. The accompanying House Precedent from the 54th Legislature (Speaker Lindsey, 1955) confirms that the four-fifths requirement applies to joint resolutions as well as bills — the source for this article's statement that a constitutional amendment resolution is not exempt from the filing deadline.
2. Texas Legislative Council. (n.d.). Dates of interest. https://tlc.texas.gov/docs/legref/Dates-of-Interest.pdf
The Legislative Council's official calendar for the 90th Legislature. Source for the November 9, 2026 first pre-filing day and the January 12, 2027 convening date at noon, each cross-referenced in the document to Article III, Section 5(a) of the Texas Constitution and Section 301.001 of the Government Code.
3. Texas Legislative Reference Library. (n.d.). Legislative sessions and years. https://lrl.texas.gov/sessions/sessionyears.cfm
Official session table listing the 90th Legislature's regular session as January 12, 2027 through May 31, 2027, a span of 140 days. Independently confirms the convening and sine die dates used in Section 3 and in the master timeline.
Constitutional Amendment Procedure — Sections 2, 3, and 4
4. Texas Constitution, Article XVII, Section 1. https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/CN/htm/CN.17/CN.17.1.htm
The governing provision for amending the Texas Constitution. Subsection (a) supplies the two-thirds-of-all-members-elected requirement and the rule that "the date of the elections shall be specified by the Legislature." Subsection (b) supplies the explanatory statement, Attorney General approval, twice-published newspaper notice at 50 to 60 days, and the 30-day courthouse posting. Subsection (c) supplies the simple-majority ratification standard and the Governor's proclamation.
5. Texas Legislative Reference Library. (n.d.). Frequently asked questions. https://lrl.texas.gov/geninfo/faq.cfm
Source for the chamber sizes used to compute the two-thirds thresholds (150 House members, 31 senators), and for the direct statement that "the governor may not veto joint resolutions proposing amendments to the state constitution."
6. House Research Organization, Texas House of Representatives. (2025). Constitutional amendments proposed for the November 2025 ballot. https://hro.house.texas.gov/pdf/focus/amend89.pdf
Nonpartisan analysis by the Texas House's own research unit. Corroborates that a joint resolution proposing an amendment may pass in a regular or special session and that "the governor does not have authority to veto such resolutions." Also the source for the composition of the November 2025 ballot referenced in Section 4.
7. Texas Constitution, Article III, Section 24(b). https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/CN/htm/CN.3/CN.3.24.htm
"No Regular Session shall be of longer duration than one hundred and forty (140) days." Establishes the fixed session length that produces the May 31, 2027 sine die date and therefore the outer bound on when the package must pass.
Election Law and the Ballot — Section 4
8. Texas Election Code, Chapter 41: Election dates and hours for voting. https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/EL/htm/EL.41.htm
Section 41.001(a)(3) establishes "the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November" as a uniform election date, without an odd- or even-year qualifier, which is the basis for the November 2, 2027 date. None of the Section 41.001(b) exceptions applies to a statewide constitutional amendment election.
9. Texas Election Code, Chapter 274: Constitutional amendments. https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/EL/pdf/EL.274.pdf
Section 274.001 provides that the Secretary of State prescribes the proposition wording only if the Legislature fails to — the basis for this article's point that the plan's authors control the ballot language. Section 274.002 governs the ballot-order drawing, Section 274.003(b) sets the 68th-day certification deadline, and Section 274.004 places constitutional amendments ahead of all other propositions.
Ratification Record and Precedent — Section 4 expander
10. Texas Legislative Reference Library. (n.d.). Amendments to the Texas Constitution. https://lrl.texas.gov/legis/constamends/index.cfm
Official cumulative record: as of the 89th Legislature in 2025, 731 amendments proposed, 547 approved by the electorate with two not certified because of court challenges, 181 defeated, and three never placed on the ballot. The source of the approximately 75 percent approval rate cited in the expander, and of the caution about uncertified results.
11. Texas Secretary of State. (2025, June 25). Secretary Nelson selects ballot order for constitutional amendment election. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/about/newsreleases/2025/062525.shtml
Official listing of the seventeen propositions on the November 4, 2025 ballot with full ballot language and assigned numbers. Used to identify which propositions concerned ad valorem taxation.
12. Governor of Texas. (2025, November 19). Proclamation 41-4245. Texas Register. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/archive/December52025/The%20Governor/The%20Governor.html
The official certification of the November 4, 2025 results, listing sixteen of the seventeen propositions as adopted. The source for this article's statement that all seven ad valorem-related propositions were adopted, and for the distinction drawn between voter approval and certification in the case of the omitted proposition.
Historical Precedent for Abolishing a Tax — Sections 1 and 5
13. Texas Legislative Council. (n.d.). The Texas Constitution. https://tlc.texas.gov/docs/legref/TxConst.pdf
The Legislative Council's official compilation. Article VIII, Section 1-e in its current form — "No State ad valorem taxes shall be levied upon any property within this State" — added November 5, 1968 and amended in 1982 and 2001. Texas has abolished a statewide property tax by constitutional amendment before; this is the provision that did it.
14. Braden, G. D. (n.d.). The Constitution of the State of Texas: An annotated and comparative analysis, Article VIII. Texas State Law Library. https://www.sll.texas.gov/assets/pdf/braden/31-article-viii.pdf
Preserves the original 1968 text of Article VIII, Section 1-e, including the year-by-year phase-out schedule that stepped the state property tax from thirty-five cents per hundred dollars of valuation in 1968 down to five cents in 1974, after which no such tax for school purposes could be levied. Establishes that a phased statewide abolition has been executed in Texas without disruption to state services.
The Plan Itself — All Sections
15. Texas Property Tax Replacement Plan. (2026). Constitutional amendment and implementing acts. Full text published on the plan's legislation pages. https://www.willcampbellfortexas.com/tptrp-amendment
Every date, deadline, duty, threshold, and safeguard described in this article is drawn from the text of the constitutional amendment and the seven implementing acts. Article and section references in the body of this article are to those instruments. They are the subject of this analysis rather than external authority for it.