Legislative Positions

87th Legislative Session Priorities (2021)

The Texas Retailers Association (TRA) supports a business-friendly regulatory environment. TRA member companies are regulated, licensed, inspected, and taxed by agencies in Texas and appreciate the Legislature’s efforts to continue to make Texas retail friendly. TRA supports regulation that is reasonable and allows our members to continue to provide excellent customer service, top quality products and continued business success in the retail industry. Our members take various approaches to provide these services, and TRA supports their efforts to make those choices independently without unnecessary regulatory burdens imposed by either the state or local governments.

Additionally, TRA’s members are playing a key role to help our state and local communities deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, and we continue to provide those essential services today. We are keeping our customers and employees healthy and safe, and have been leaders in implementing protocols, procedures, and technology to ensure safe shopping environments. TRA supports the state’s actions during the pandemic and appreciates the broad impact and guidance given by our elected officials during this time.

TRA will support measures to provide workable solutions to the retail community across Texas to enable our members to keep our customers and employees safe and healthy while continuing to provide our community with essential needs and services throughout the pandemic and into the future.

TRA supports liability protections for retailers against meritless legal claims due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This protection will allow retailers to continue to serve their communities and devote resources to those efforts rather than baseless lawsuits. These protections should also keep intact reasonable recourse for those truly harmed by bad actors.

TRA supports passing statewide legislation that would preempt local governments from unilaterally enacting negative local employment and labor laws mandating employer benefits, employer hiring practices, scheduling, and other daily operational business practices.

TRA supports inventory property tax relief. Retailers across Texas are subject to increasingly higher property taxes, not only on their retail space but also on the inventories on their shelves. Texas business property taxes continue to serve as a significant disadvantage to the retail industry in our state. Inventory property tax relief is not selective; it benefits large and small businesses equally and attracts greater investment in the Texas economy. 

TRA supports efforts to address the significant growth of Organized Retail Crime (ORC). Retailers are seeing more cases and higher losses as organized crime continues to target them. Retailers and online marketplaces are making significant investments to prevent these crimes.  As such, TRA supports legislative efforts to help protect consumers from unknowingly purchasing stolen merchandise originating from ORC activity, aid law enforcement in tracking those engaged in ORC, and to make it more difficult for bad actors to sell illicit goods.




86th Legislative Session Summary (2019)
85th Legislative Session Summary (2017)