Texas Property Tax Protest Calculator

Should You Protest? And How the Numbers Work

In Texas, your property tax bill is your taxable value multiplied by the combined rate of every taxing unit (school district, city, county, and special districts). You cannot change the rates, but you can challenge the value the appraisal district assigned. If comparable homes are appraised for less, if your home has condition issues, or if the market value is simply too high, a protest can lower your taxable value and your bill.

Because a typical Dallas-Fort Worth or Houston combined rate runs about 2.0% to 2.2%, each $10,000 reduction in appraised value saves roughly $200 to $220 per year. This calculator applies your county's exact adopted rates to your two values and shows the difference.

Filing is free and low-risk. You file a protest with your county appraisal review board (ARB); the appraisal district cannot raise your value simply because you protested. Many homeowners settle informally with an appraiser before a formal hearing.

Key Texas property tax deadlines

• Protest deadline: May 15, or 30 days after your Notice of Appraised Value is delivered, whichever is later - a statewide rule under Tax Code Section 41.44.
• Homestead exemption: file by April 30 (late applications allowed up to two years after delinquency). The homestead also activates the 10% appraisal cap.
• Over-65 or disabled exemption: file as soon as you qualify; it can be applied for the year you turn 65.
• Tax bills mailed: around October; due January 31, delinquent February 1.

See also the Texas property tax cap calculator to project your capped value and the Texas over-65 property tax calculator for the school tax ceiling.

Worked Example: A Harris County Protest

Say your Harris County home is appraised at $400,000 on your Notice of Appraised Value, you have a residence homestead exemption, and your comparable sales support a value of $360,000. Using the tax year 2026 adopted Harris County rates in this calculator, the savings math works like this:

1. Value reduction: $400,000 - $360,000 = $40,000.
2. Combined nominal rate: Houston ISD (0.8421%) + City of Houston (0.51919%) + Harris County (0.4175%) + Harris Health (0.19528%) + Flood Control (0.05266%) + Port of Houston (0.00603%) + HCDE (0.004797%) = about 2.0376% of value.
3. Annual savings: $40,000 x 2.0376% = about $815 per year. Because the $140,000 school homestead exemption is a fixed dollar amount subtracted from both values, the savings simply equal the reduction times the combined rate.
4. Bill before and after: with the homestead exemption applied to the school portion, the estimated bill drops from about $6,971 at $400,000 to about $6,156 at $360,000 - a reduction of roughly 11.7%.

If a protest firm handled that case at typical industry contingency fees of 25% to 50% of first-year savings, the fee would be roughly $204 to $408, leaving you about $407 to $611 in year one. Filing the protest yourself keeps the full $815, and many Texas county appraisal districts let you file a protest online for free.

A successful protest also lowers your 10% cap base

Texas's homestead appraisal cap (Tax Code Section 23.23) limits growth in your taxable appraised value to 10% per year, and the cap always works from the prior year's appraised value. When a protest lowers this year's value, every later year's capped value grows from that lower base, so in a rising market a single successful protest can keep reducing your bills rather than saving money only once. How much that compounding is worth depends on how fast values in your area rise, but it means the first-year savings shown by this calculator can understate the full benefit of a successful protest. Use the Texas property tax cap calculator to project how the cap limits your taxable value from a given base.