Time to pay, but 10,500 lack bills for property tax

That is the headline of the article in the Houston Chronicle and on Chron.com. It seems to me that if we want to get our point about property taxes being to high, protesting your appraisal value is one way. It is also probably the easiest since you do not have to deal with the up to 15 taxing entities that could have "claim" on your property. Not that being said, most people do not have the time to protest their taxes by themselves, so I would suggest using one of the companies that will protest your taxes for a percentage of what you would save. It cost you nothing up front and can save you large amounts in the end. I'll use my home as the example. My pre protest value was going to be $116,800, by protesting it it was reduced to $105,000 that is a savings of $11,800 which is a 10.2% decrease in my taxable value. Now if you figure that my tax rate including homestead exemption is around say $3.50 per 100 in valuation I just saved around $450 in taxes this year. Not a huge amount but it makes a huge difference if you start to look at things on a say school district level.

XYZ ISD has say 100,000 homes in it and say 20 % of the homes protest their value and all of them get their appraised value reduced by oh let's say 5%, the result is dramatic. We will assume that the average value of the homes is $100,000 and the district tax rate is $1.75 per 100 in valuation look at the numbers

100,000 homes times ( 1000 x 1.75) = $175,000,000 in tax revenue. Yes 175 Million in tax revenue. No on to the appraisal protest

Ok

80,000 homes with the same appraisal values and tax rates. - 80,000 x(1000x1.75) = $140,000,000

20,000 homes with appraisal values 5% less and the same tax rate. 20,000x(950x1.75)=$33,250,000

Which ends up with a reduction to $173,250,000 it is only a 2 million dollar reduction but that $2million is more than most people think. It can send a message to the leaders of the district that the residents are going to whatever they can to keep their wallets from overflowing. The key for all good tax conscious people is to help spread the word to your neighbors to help to by protesting their appraisal value, and explain to them that their mortgage payments can come down because of this small effort on their part, and in the worst case it cost them nothing if their appraisal value does not go down.

Read the Article and spread the word. Conservative ideas are spread best by word of mouth, and from one friend to another. We are our most powerful when we work at the neighborhood level and expand out from there.