The owners of the Houston Astros have filed a lawsuit seeking to exempt the team from having to pay property taxes on their stadium.
The Houston Chronicle reports the Astros are trying to avoid property taxes on Daikin Park by claiming Harris County “has no authority beyond what is conferred by the Texas Constitution or statute,” adding the state’s tax code exempts “large-scale sports venues” from being taxed. The Astros want their stadium to be removed from the Harris Central Appraisal District’s 2025 appraisal, and they are also calling for a reappraisal of its property with the goal of restoring Daikin Park to its pre-January valuation.
A 1997 state law declared that stadiums owned by a municipality or county were exempt from property taxes. Daikin Park is owned by the Harris County Houston Sports Authority and leased to the team.
Dr. Geoffrey Propheter, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Denver, told the Chronicle that the stadium’s ownership may have created a loophole to enable the pursuit of property taxes.
“Texas law exempts a stadium owned by a municipality or a county, but the Sports Authority is a special joint power – it’s neither a municipality nor county,” Propheter said. “The facility owner is neither a county nor a municipality. And because of that, if you interpret it literally as it’s written in state law, then someone would have legal grounds to say, ‘yeah, it’s not exempt because it’s not owned by the county nor the city.’ The next step is then saying, ‘Isn’t the Sports Authority the child of the county and the city?’ And that’s true, it is a child. But the child is different from the parent.”
Propheter added, “If the legislature wanted to keep sports facilities or sports teams exempt, they did a piss poor job of writing the law. They left quite the lane for an appraisal and tax.”
The Harris Central Appraisal District declined to comment on the lawsuit, stating it was unable to discuss pending litigation.
Photo courtesy City of Houston
