The majority of homeowners should like Senator Paul Bettencourt’s Property Tax Relief Act being passed by the Senate narrowly 5-4 on Monday as a positive, strictly when it comes to the property tax appeals system. It will only be positive, however, if the current three year trend continues when it comes to the number of homestead owners upward mobilizing by utilizing.
So what do we mean when we say mobilizing by utilizing? We’re talking about the process that every homestead owner in Texas needs to be taking advantage of – the “online property tax appeal option” for homestead owners who meet the following two requirements:
(1) the homestead is located in a homogenous neighborhoods (no Ranches), and
(2) that the homestead is located in a county with a total population over 250,000.
By allowing e-filing, the government removed the need to either (a) miss work, or (2) hire a professional, effectively giving away anywhere from 30% to 50% of the money you did “save” on hiring him in the first place.
Strictly speaking from a residential property perspective this bill marks the beginning of a “new frontier” for how Texas homestead owners manage their property taxes in Texas.
The bill becomes effective on November 5, 2017, so you will want to make sure and protest this year to lock in a fair taxable value for the new “system”.
Why should you protest
If you are one of the 200,000 not protesting in Travis County, for example, let me ask you this: Are you a fan of money? Of course you are.
By not protesting, you are saying you are not executing the tools now available to you to manage the taxable value of your most important asset.
Let’s talk about it this way. If the government didn’t require your employer to file the appropriate paperwork in regards to federal income tax, and on a year where you made $35,000, the government just rounded it up to $40,000, would you accept that? Until now, the government thought it was too much of a hassle to protest and just rounded up values, assuming Texans wouldn’t protest.
From an appraisal standpoint, you might also be asking yourself right now, “Are they ever going to tell us, how exactly 30-40 residential appraisers find the time to individually appraise our homes every year? Unless the Texas Government has hired Santa Claus to fly these appraisers around, there is virtually no way they could individually appraise every home and property they are responsible if they wanted to. That is why they acknowledge the mass appraisal technique, and why protest is so critical.
So let’s keep bridging gap with the government by getting involved. With RealValueIQ, we make protesting easy: There is no risk, it doesn’t cost a thing, and even if you purchase your evidence from RealValueIQ, you don’t pay if you don’t pay lower taxes. PERIOD.
Onward.
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