A great tax battle is being waged among boomers, millennials and Gen X: ‘a group of people are voting to opt themselves out’

As Texas is a no-tax state that leans heavily on property taxes to fund public services, younger Lone Star State homeowners and future buyers fear they’ll bear the burden of the new property tax largesse and face higher rates.

“You’re stuck there, and you’re looking at an inevitable property tax increase, because a group of people is voting to opt themselves out,” said Taylor Scriber, a millennial Texan looking to buy his first home, in comments to Business Insider.

Data from the Texas Senate Local Government Committee backs Scriber’s sentiment, noting that 39% of statewide homesteads pay zero school district property taxes, including approximately 61% of senior or disabled homeowners.

Scriber told Business Insider that he believes the seniors in his life sympathize with the disparities in property tax rules, but that’s as far as it goes.

“They just kind of thought about it for a moment, and they were like, ‘But I want my property taxes to be lowered,’” he said.

Winds of war are whipping between younger and older Americans

A generational war on taxes across the U.S. hasn’t happened yet, but experts say the battlefield bugles may be tuning up. That’s the case as some wonder if America’s tax system is becoming increasingly tilted by age rather than ability to pay.

Yet there’s one caveat: a shifting tax structure may be warranted.

“A transfer is definitely happening, but it’s more structural than deliberate,” Colton Pace, CEO and Founder of Ownwell, a property tax appeal service, told Moneywise.

Pace said nearly every state layers extra relief for homeowners 65 and older on top of already existing general homestead exemptions.

“But in many places, that’s paired with a freeze on school district taxes that locks in a senior’s assessed value while younger buyers and commercial properties absorb the full market increase every year,” he said, citing the Texas Senate findings.

Going the extra mile for seniors

Another key factor is that U.S. States and counties seem to be going out of their way to thread a needle to keep seniors on fixed or no income from losing their homes. “They’re trying to do so without blowing a hole in the budgets that pay for schools, parks, emergency services, and other services,” Pace noted.

Yet over the last two years, many states have tried to balance this with increased senior exemptions, but that money doesn’t disappear into a vacuum. “Instead, it gets shifted to non-senior homeowners and commercial property owners,” Pace stated.

For instance, Illinois raised the income cap on its senior assessment freeze from $65,000 to $75,000 for 2026, with further increases scheduled through 2029. In 2025, New York gave localities the option to raise their senior exemption ceiling from 50% to 65% of a home’s assessed value starting this year.

“Many have already opted in,” Pace said. “Local governments try not to cut services when a larger share of the tax base gets frozen or exempted. Instead, they often raise property tax rates to maintain or meet future budgets.”

The law is on the state’s side on tax policy decisions

Other public policy experts say property tax exemptions rely on state constitutional or statutory classifications that allow age as a valid basis for differential taxation.

“That has held up to equal protection challenges because states have broad discretion in this area,” Lea D. Uradu, a Maryland-based tax attorney at FileTax.com, told Moneywise. “The legal stability is what has led to the trend growing so much without control, and correcting the resulting revenue shift can only be done through legislation, not litigation.”