State Budget & Taxation Task Force: 2023-2024 Final Report
- TCCRI Staff
- Feb 1, 2025
- 1 min read
The Texas economy continues to be the envy of other states. In January 2025, the Comptroller in his Biennial Revenue Estimate (BRE) for the 2026-2027 Biennium projected an ending general revenue (GR) balance of $23.8 billion for 2024-2025 biennium, which concludes on August 31, 2025. But that rosy forecast is subject to the usual caveats; projections of economic growth (or contractions) are always tentative at best.
It is a given that, due to the large surplus, there will be many proposed spending increases in the 89th regular legislation session. It is critical that legislators consider proposals to increase spending (other than spending to finance tax cuts at the local level) with a skeptical eye, in the same manner they would if the state had no surplus at all. The state having a large surplus essentially means taxpayers are being overtaxed during the current biennium; the focus of the 89th Legislature should be on refunding most of those excess funds to the state’s taxpayers.
Download the full report here.
