Property Tax Info

Texas school districts are required to exempt $140,000 of a home's appraised value from the taxes they collect (Tax Code §11.13(b)). This exemption is mandatory — every school district in Texas grants it automatically to a qualifying homestead; it isn't something a district can opt out of.

Beyond that mandatory school exemption, any other taxing unit — a county, city, hospital district, or other special district — may separately choose to adopt its own local-option homestead exemption of up to 20% of a home's appraised value, with a minimum exemption of $5,000 if it adopts one at all (Tax Code §11.13(n)). This part is optional: not every taxing unit offers it, and where they do, the percentage can vary by entity.

To qualify for the general homestead exemption, you must own the property and use it as your principal residence as of January 1 of the tax year. You can only claim one homestead exemption at a time, and only in Texas — you cannot claim a homestead exemption on a Texas property while also claiming one on a residence anywhere else, in or out of state.

Separate, additional exemptions exist for homeowners 65+, disabled homeowners, and disabled veterans — not covered on this page yet.

Every property owner has the right to protest to their county's Appraisal Review Board (ARB) if they disagree with the appraisal district's determination of their property's value, or with most other appraisal-district actions concerning their property (Tax Code §41.41). An appraisal district cannot charge a fee for filing a protest.

The appraisal district must mail a Notice of Appraised Value by April 1 for a residence homestead, or May 1 for other property (or as soon as practicable after those dates) (Tax Code §25.19). The protest deadline is May 15, or the 30th day after that notice was mailed to you — whichever is later. The clock runs from the date the appraisal district mailed the notice, not the date you received it (Tax Code §41.44(a)(1)).

A protest doesn't have to use the official form to be valid — a written notice is sufficient as long as it identifies the property, the owner, and some basis for dissatisfaction with the appraisal district's decision. The Comptroller's Form 50-132 is the standard form appraisal districts must provide on request (Tax Code §41.44(d), Form 50-132 ↗).

Missed the deadline? There are two separate late-filing paths, and they're easy to conflate — this is one where the deadline that actually applies to you depends on which situation you're in:

• Filed your protest late in the first place: if you missed the May 15 / 30-day deadline but file before the ARB approves the appraisal records for the year (typically mid-summer), you're still entitled to a hearing if you can show "good cause" to the board for the delay (Tax Code §41.44(b)). This is a general exception for a late-filed notice of protest.
• Filed on time but missed your hearing: this is a different situation, governed locally rather than by this statute — see the Travis County section below for TCAD's specific no-show / reopening rule, which runs on its own, much shorter clock.

Commercial, multifamily, industrial, and utility properties above a Comptroller-published, inflation-adjusted value threshold are entitled to have their protest heard by a special ARB panel with specific qualifications, rather than a standard panel — relevant mainly to larger investment-grade assets (Tax Code §6.425(b)). The threshold is $62,883,169, current as of 2026 — it's adjusted for inflation every year, so confirm the current-year figure on the Comptroller's site before relying on it for another tax year.

If you're dissatisfied with the ARB's ruling, you can appeal further — to state district court, or (depending on the property's value and type) to the State Office of Administrative Hearings (SOAH) or regular binding arbitration. Each path has its own deadlines and deposit requirements; this page doesn't walk through them in detail yet.

Article VIII, §1-d-1 of the Texas Constitution allows qualifying land to be appraised on its capacity to produce agricultural products — its productivity value — instead of market value. Tax Code Subchapter D (§§23.51–23.60) sets the rules for this "open-space" valuation (Tax Code §23.51, §23.52).

To qualify, land must be currently devoted principally to agricultural use, to the degree of intensity generally accepted in the area, and have been devoted principally to agricultural use (or timber production) for 5 of the preceding 7 years (Tax Code §23.51(1)). Qualifying activities include cultivating soil, producing crops, floriculture, viticulture and horticulture, raising livestock, and several related uses — the exact list is broad but not unlimited; see the Travis County section below for TCAD's own summary of qualifying activities.

Applications use Form 50-129, filed with the county's chief appraiser before May 1 of the tax year. The chief appraiser may grant a good-cause extension of up to 60 days. Once approved, the land generally stays qualified in future years without refiling, unless ownership changes or the land's eligibility ends (Tax Code §23.54(d)–(e)). If a landowner fails to notify the appraisal office when eligibility ends, a penalty equal to 10% of the resulting tax difference applies (Tax Code §23.54(h)).

Rollback tax exposure: if the land's use changes away from agriculture, an additional "rollback" tax applies — the difference between what was actually paid and what would have been owed at market value, for each of the 3 years preceding the change of use. (This was reduced from a 5-year lookback by 2021's H.B. 3833; older sources describing a 5-year rollback period are out of date.) A tax lien attaches to the land on the date the change of use occurs (Tax Code §23.55(a)–(b)).

One specific, commonly-misunderstood carve-out: converting the land to your own residence homestead does not, by itself, count as a change of use that triggers rollback (Tax Code §23.55(i)). A handful of narrower exceptions also exist — right-of-way sales, condemnation, and transfers to government or certain qualifying nonprofit uses among them (Tax Code §23.55(f)–(q)).

Wildlife management use is a related, separate qualifying category available only to land that already has ag valuation, governed by its own standard (Tax Code §23.521) — see the Travis County section below for how TCAD applies it.

A tax lien attaches to the property on January 1 each year, securing that year's tax, penalties, and interest before the tax is even billed (Tax Code §32.01). Taxes are due on receipt of the bill and become delinquent if not paid before February 1 of the following year — in practice, the deadline is January 31 (Tax Code §31.02).

Once delinquent, a tax incurs a penalty of 6% for the first month, plus 1% for each additional month, up to a maximum of 12% once the tax has been delinquent since July 1 — that 12% cap applies regardless of how many additional months pass after that. Separately, a delinquent tax also accrues interest at 1% per month, with no cap, for as long as it remains unpaid — so total cost keeps climbing even after the penalty maxes out (Tax Code §33.01(a), (c)).

A taxing unit can sue to foreclose the tax lien, enforce personal liability for the tax, or both, at any time after the tax becomes delinquent — there's no waiting period. If the suit results in a judgment for foreclosure, the court orders the property sold to satisfy the debt (Tax Code §33.41).

Homeowners who are 65+, disabled, or qualifying disabled veterans have a specific protection on their residence homestead: filing a deferral affidavit blocks a taxing unit from suing to collect or selling the property (with a 181-day tail after the homeowner stops occupying it), no standard §33.01 penalty applies during that period, and interest is capped at a flat 5% per year instead of the standard penalty/interest structure above (Tax Code §33.06(a), (b), (d)). This deferral is a distinct mechanism from the installment options covered in the Homestead Cap and How Your Bill Is Calculated topics — this page only covers that it exists and what it changes about non-payment consequences, not how to apply for it.

Four values, defined in state law, each building on the last: market value (what the property would sell for), appraised value (the appraisal district's estimate of market value as of January 1 — for a homestead subject to the 10% cap, this can be lower than market value; see the Homestead Cap topic), assessed value (appraised value times the assessment ratio — currently 100% for essentially all property, so assessed value normally equals appraised value), and taxable value (assessed value minus whatever exemptions apply) (Tax Code §1.04, §26.02).

The statute lays out the calculation as four steps: (1) subtract any partial exemption that applies to appraised value (uncommon — mostly disaster-related exemptions) to get net appraised value; (2) multiply by the assessment ratio to get assessed value; (3) subtract any partial exemption that applies to assessed value (this is where homestead exemptions land) to get taxable value; (4) multiply taxable value by the tax rate (Tax Code §26.09(c)). Tax rates are expressed per $100 of taxable value. This whole sequence runs separately for each taxing entity, because each entity can have its own exemptions and its own rate — a parcel's taxable value for the school district is often different from its taxable value for the county, even though they started from the same appraised value.

Worked example (illustrative numbers, not any specific real parcel or this year's actual adopted rates): a property with a $450,000 market value, no cap in effect, and no exemptions — say, an investment property. Appraised value: $450,000 (equals market value — no cap applies here). Step 1: nothing to subtract at this stage for most properties, so net appraised value stays $450,000. Step 2: assessment ratio is 100%, so assessed value is also $450,000. Step 3: no exemptions in this example, so taxable value is $450,000 for every entity. Step 4: multiply by each entity's own rate and add them up —

A real Travis County bill usually includes more than three entities (school district, city or MUD, county, hospital district, junior college, and others depending on the parcel's location), and if the property carried a homestead exemption, taxable value would be lower — and different per entity, since the mandatory $140,000 school exemption and each entity's own local-option percentage apply separately. See the Homestead Exemptions topic for how that math actually works, and check the Rate Trends page for this year's real adopted rates rather than the illustrative ones above.

For a residence homestead, the appraisal office can only raise appraised value each year up to the lesser of: (1) the property's actual current market value, or (2) last year's appraised value, plus 10% of that value, plus the market value of any new improvements. TCAD still determines and records real market value every year regardless — the cap only limits what gets used for tax purposes, it doesn't stop the district from tracking true value (Tax Code §23.23(a)–(b)).

The cap vs. the exemption — genuinely different mechanics: the exemption subtracts a dollar amount from taxable value, and it's entity-specific — the mandatory $140,000 school exemption plus whatever local-option percentage each county/city/district has separately adopted (see Homestead Exemptions, and How Your Bill Is Calculated for how that math works). The cap, by contrast, limits growth of appraised value itself — the number that exists before any entity's exemption is even subtracted — so it's the same figure for every taxing entity on the parcel, not something that varies entity by entity the way exemptions do.

Timing catch people miss: the cap does not start protecting you the moment you buy and homestead a property. It only takes effect on January 1 of the year after the first year you qualify for the homestead exemption — so a home bought and homesteaded this year gets no cap benefit on next year's valuation; the earliest it applies is the year after that. The cap also isn't permanent to the property — it expires on January 1 of the first year that neither the original qualifying owner nor their spouse or surviving spouse still holds the homestead exemption there, which in practice usually means it resets when the home is sold to an unrelated buyer (Tax Code §23.23(c)).

Worked example (illustrative numbers only): say a home's capped appraised value last year was $400,000, and TCAD determines this year's true market value is $460,000 — a 15% jump, with no new improvements. The cap ceiling this year is $400,000 + 10% of $400,000 = $440,000. Since market value ($460,000) is higher than the ceiling ($440,000), the lesser number wins — this year's appraised value for tax purposes is $440,000, even though the notice will also show the real $460,000 market value. Now say next year market value holds flat at $460,000: the new ceiling is $440,000 + 10% of $440,000 = $484,000. Since $460,000 is now below that ceiling, appraised value catches all the way up to the real $460,000 market value — the cap only binds in years the ceiling is actually the lower number, and it stops mattering once value growth slows enough for the two figures to meet.

"New improvements" (which aren't subject to the cap — they get added at full value) specifically excludes ordinary repairs and maintenance. And the cap doesn't apply at all to property valued under the special-appraisal methods — agricultural/open-space land, for instance, is valued on productivity rather than market value in the first place, so this cap mechanism doesn't come into play there; see the Ag Valuation topic (Tax Code §23.23(d)–(e)).