In a report accompanied by the cheery Sisyphean image to the left, Texas Comptroller Susan Combs revealed that both property taxes and local sales taxes have grown almost 200 percent since the early 1990s.
Of course, our fine state has seen economic and population booms during that same period, not to mention our dollars being worth less due to inflation. But still.
You can find a copy of Combs' report Your Money and the Taxing Facts here. While the report and an accompanying website purport to empower us all to understand who is taxing us and why (a task more difficult in Texas, since we don't have a state income tax but rather fund schools and public services through an array of local taxes), there's a curious lack of context to tell us how we compare to national norms and how bad things really are.
Is Combs trying to help fellow Texans understand who is taxing them, or is this perhaps a political play to "empower" folks to cast "no-to-taxes" votes in the November elections? Let us know in the comments below!
Travis County (the dark county in the middle) has a high number of taxing entities, but like much of the report there's a lack of context about what that means.