San Antonioculture & etiquette

Texas levies no personal income tax and voters wrote a prohibition on one into the state constitution in 2019. The money is raised on property instead: a Bexar County address typically carries a combined rate from the county, city, school district and various special districts of roughly two per cent of appraised value, and renters pay it through the rent. Texas has raised its school-district homestead exemption more than once in recent years, so check the current figure with the Bexar Appraisal District rather than an older article. A Texas salary is not the same as Texas take-home until you have done this.

Texas abolished the annual safety inspection for non-commercial vehicles on 1 January 2025, replacing it with a $7.50 inspection programme replacement fee collected at registration. Emissions testing continues in designated counties, and Bexar County is being added to that programme in 2026. So the safety test went away and an emissions test is arriving at roughly the same time, which is exactly the kind of change that stale advice gets wrong. Confirm the current position with the Texas DPS before assuming either.

Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the country and has not expanded Medicaid, so a working-age adult on a low income can fall into a coverage gap with no state programme underneath. Texas also runs no state marketplace: individual cover is bought on the federal HealthCare.gov site, whose open-enrolment window is fixed and unforgiving. If your employer offers a plan, take it in the new-hire window. If not, diary the federal deadline the day you land.

The Social Security Administration verifies your status against DHS records that lag entry by one to two weeks, so going in on day two usually wastes the trip. Only work-authorised people qualify; everyone else files IRS Form W-7 for an ITIN. The card is free.

San Antonio draws on the Edwards Aquifer, and the San Antonio Water System declares drought stages based on measured aquifer levels. Each stage sets which day of the week and which hours you may water a landscape, and it is enforced with fines rather than requested politely. Stages tighten and relax through the year. If you are renting a house with a lawn, find out the current stage before you inherit someone else's watering habit.

The Balcones Escarpment puts San Antonio in what hydrologists call Flash Flood Alley — one of the most flood-prone regions in North America, where a stalled storm can put water over a low crossing in minutes. Check whether an address is in a floodplain before signing, never drive into water, and keep in mind that Texas runs its own electricity grid, largely isolated from the rest of the country, which failed catastrophically in the February 2021 freeze. Both facts argue for a few days of water, a battery and a plan.