Ector County Property Tax & Sales Tax

Ector County Tax Rates - At a Glance

Ector County Current Tax Rates Summary

Tax Type	Rate	Notes
Property Tax (combined)	~2.22% of value	No single county rate - the sum of school district, city, county, college district, and hospital district on a City of Odessa / Ector County ISD parcel. Representative nominal stack; typical effective rate runs about 1.27% after exemptions.
Annual Vehicle (Car) Tax	None	Texas levies no annual value-based vehicle property tax
Sales Tax	8.25%	6.25% state + 2.00% local (City of Odessa and local special-purpose components); groceries and most unprepared food exempt
Homestead Exemption	$140,000 school + 10% cap	Plus a 20% local-option homestead on the ISD, college, city, and county units (10% on the hospital district), each minimum $5,000
Due Date	January 31	Delinquent February 1; statewide protest deadline May 15; exemption applications due April 30

Ector County Property Tax

Ector County property tax comes in two numbers that are easy to confuse. The county's own adopted rate is $0.438950 per $100 of value for the 2025 tax year - and it is only the Ector County government's portion. Your actual bill is the sum of every overlapping taxing unit that covers your parcel: your school district, your city, the county, the community college district, and the hospital district. Combined, the typical total effective rate in Ector County is about 1.27% of market value - an estimate from Census ACS 2024 5-year data (median real estate taxes paid $2,538 divided by median home value $200,200). Because the mix of taxing units differs from parcel to parcel, there is no single "Ector County rate" for a full bill; the figures below are worked examples.

Ector County adopted its rate in two components: maintenance and operations $0.329500 plus debt service $0.109450. The story of 2025 is the increase: the county held its rate flat at $0.350000 per $100 from 2021 through 2024, then raised it to $0.438950 - about $0.088950 more, roughly a 25% jump. Nearly all of that is in the debt-service line, which rose from about $0.018636 in 2024 to $0.109450 in 2025, while the maintenance-and-operations part barely moved. In plain terms, the county took on new debt for capital projects, and the debt component of its rate grew to service it. Ector County also levies one consolidated rate: no separate Road and Bridge, Farm-to-Market, or Lateral Road unit appears in the appraisal district's complete Truth-in-Taxation entity table.

How a typical Ector County bill is built (taxing-unit stack)

School district City County College district Hospital district

City of Odessa / Ector County ISD parcel - adopted rates per $100 (2025 tax year)

Taxing unit	Rate /$100	Type
Ector County ISD	$1.004800	School
City of Odessa	$0.470700	City
Ector County	$0.438950	County
Odessa College (Odessa Junior College District)	$0.176887	College
Ector County Hospital District	$0.133344	Hospital
Nominal total	~$2.224681	~2.22%

Rates from the Ector County Appraisal District 2025 Truth-in-Taxation summary. This example is for a City of Odessa / Ector County ISD parcel; your total depends on your city, school district, and any special districts. Unincorporated parcels may instead fall inside an Emergency Services District ($0.080000).

What changed from 2024

The appraisal district publishes five years of rates side by side, so the direction of travel is unambiguous: the county and the hospital district raised their rates for 2025, while the school district cut its rate and the college and city held roughly steady.

Ector County taxing units, 2024 vs 2025 adopted rates per $100

Taxing unit	2024	2025	Change
Ector County ISD	$1.014000	$1.004800	-$0.009200
City of Odessa	$0.466275	$0.470700	+$0.004425
Ector County	$0.350000	$0.438950	+$0.088950
Odessa College	$0.176887	$0.176887	flat
Ector County Hospital District	$0.100373	$0.133344	+$0.032971

The county's $0.088950 increase and the hospital district's $0.032971 increase are the two big moves; Ector County ISD's cut partly offsets them. A rising rate on a rising appraised value compounds - if your value also went up, your 2025 bill can climb by more than the rate change alone suggests.

Where your property-tax dollar goes

Ector County ISD ~45.2% City ~21.2% County ~19.7% College ~8.0% Hospital ~6.0%

On a typical City of Odessa / Ector County ISD parcel, Ector County ISD is about 45.2% of the nominal bill ($1.004800 / $2.224681 nominal total), the City of Odessa about 21.2%, Ector County about 19.7%, Odessa College about 8.0%, and the Ector County Hospital District about 6.0%. Unlike a low-county-rate county such as Midland, Ector County's own share is a substantial fifth of the bill, because its 2025 rate increase brought it close to the city's rate. Percentages are rounded and use the nominal posted rates before any exemption - after the $140,000 school-district homestead exemption and the 20% local-option exemptions on every unit, the taxable amount on each line drops sharply, which is the main reason the county's typical effective rate (about 1.27%) sits well below the nominal stacked rate (about 2.22%).

Who appraises, bills, and collects in Ector County

Ector County is one of the Texas counties where the appraisal district is the taxpayer's main point of contact for both value and payment:

• The Ector County Appraisal District sets appraised values, processes exemptions, runs protests, and hosts the property search, the collection-record search, and the "Pay Now" payment option, at ectorcad.org (1301 E 8th Street, Odessa, TX 79761-4703; 432-332-6834; ector@ectorcad.org; chief appraiser Layne Young, RPA).
• The Ector County Tax Assessor-Collector, at co.ector.tx.us (1010 E. 8th Street, Suite 100, Odessa; 432-498-4055), also handles vehicle registration and titling.

For practical purposes, both value questions and online payment start at ectorcad.org. If you need to confirm which office holds your account, call the appraisal district at 432-332-6834.

Homestead exemption, the 10% cap, and key dates

If you own and occupy your home as your principal residence on January 1, you can claim a residence homestead exemption, and you generally apply by April 30. For an Ector County ISD parcel, the statewide school-district exemption removes $140,000 from the value the school district taxes for the 2025 tax year. If the owner is 65 or older, an additional $60,000 ISD exemption applies.

What sets Ector County apart is that every major taxing unit grants a percentage local-option homestead exemption, so a homestead is taxed on less than its market value on every line of the bill:

• Ector County ISD grants 20% of value (minimum $5,000) on top of the statewide $140,000, plus $60,000 for over-65 and $60,000 for disabled owners.
• Odessa College grants 20% (minimum $5,000), plus $40,000 for over-65 and $10,000 for disabled owners.
• The City of Odessa grants 20% (minimum $5,000), plus $15,000 for over-65 and $5,000 for disabled owners.
• Ector County grants 20% (minimum $5,000), plus $25,000 for over-65 and $3,000 for disabled owners.
• The Ector County Hospital District grants 10% (minimum $5,000), plus $25,000 for over-65 and $10,000 for disabled owners.

If an over-65 exemption is granted, the appraisal district removes the disabled exemption (you receive one or the other, not both). Separately, the 10% homestead appraisal cap limits how much your homestead's appraised (taxed) value can rise to 10% per year, not counting new improvements. The cap applies to the appraised value used for your bill, not the market value the appraisal district sets, and it starts the year after you first qualify for the homestead exemption. In a market as cyclical as the Permian Basin, this cap does real work in both directions.

Key dates: payment is due January 31 and unpaid amounts become delinquent February 1. The statewide protest deadline is May 15 or 30 days after your appraisal notice is delivered, whichever is later, and exemption applications are due April 30. Texas Tax Code Section 1.06 rolls any deadline that falls on a weekend or holiday to the next business day. We were not able to extract an Ector County-specific penalty-and-interest schedule from an official source in this pass, so no penalty percentages are stated on this page.

How to protest your appraisal

Protests go to the Ector County Appraisal District, which publishes its protest procedures and important deadlines and runs the property search and appeals process from its home page. File and track everything at ectorcad.org or call 432-332-6834. Some private firms offer to handle protests for a percentage of any tax savings; such firms exist and charge a contingency fee, but we do not cite any savings figure or success rate as fact - results vary by parcel and year.

Estimate your Ector County property tax

Sources: the Ector County Appraisal District 2025 Truth-in-Taxation summary (every taxing unit's adopted rate and its M&O / debt-service split, plus five years of history), the Ector CAD Homestead Exemption Amounts by Entity table (every exemption amount), the Texas Comptroller (sales tax), and Census ACS 2024 5-year estimates (typical effective rate).

Vehicle Taxes in Texas

Unlike many states, Texas does not levy an annual value-based property tax on cars or other vehicles. There is no yearly "car tax" bill in Ector County. Instead, vehicle taxes in Texas work two ways:

• One-time motor-vehicle sales/use tax of 6.25% at purchase. For a private-party sale, the tax is charged on the greater of the actual sales price or 80% of the vehicle's Standard Presumptive Value (SPV). A vehicle received as a gift is taxed at a flat $10 instead.
• A flat annual registration fee (plus any local add-ons), which is a fixed fee, not a tax on the vehicle's value. In Ector County you register and title through the Ector County Tax Assessor-Collector.

So if you searched for a Texas car or vehicle sales tax, the answer is the one-time 6.25% charged when the vehicle is titled - there is no recurring vehicle property tax to budget for each year.

Ector County Sales Tax

The combined sales tax rate in the City of Odessa is 8.25% - the Texas maximum. It is made up of the 6.25% state rate plus a 2.00% local share collected by the City of Odessa and local special-purpose components, which in Odessa include an economic-development share. Texas law caps that total local portion at 2.0% as a shared ceiling, so once the city and special-district rates reach 2%, no further local rate can stack on top - which is why 8.25% is the maximum combined sales tax here as everywhere else in Texas.

City of Odessa (Ector County) sales tax components

Component	Rate
Texas state rate	6.25%
City of Odessa and local special-purpose components	2.00%
Combined rate	8.25%

The 2.00% local share is the maximum Texas allows. The exact breakdown of the City of Odessa's local components between the general city rate and its economic-development / special-purpose portions is confirmed as totalling 2.00% but its precise split is pending confirmation from the Texas Comptroller's official allocation. Groceries and most unprepared food are exempt from sales tax.

Real Example: a $200,200 Odessa Home

Here is how the numbers flow on a representative $200,200 City of Odessa / Ector County ISD home (the county median value) with a homestead exemption (owner under 65), applying only the school-district homestead to the school unit and no other local-option exemptions:

• Market value: $200,200.
• Homestead exemption: the $140,000 school-district exemption drops the Ector County ISD taxable value to $60,200. The other four units tax the full $200,200 in this simplified example.
• Stacked total: school $60,200 × 1.004800% = ~$605; city $200,200 × 0.470700% = ~$942; county $200,200 × 0.438950% = ~$879; Odessa College ~$354; hospital district ~$267.
• Estimated annual bill: about $3,047 per year.
• Monthly equivalent: about $254 per month.
• Effective rate: about 1.52% of market value in this simplified example.

The 20% local-option exemptions lower this substantially. Because Ector County ISD, Odessa College, the City of Odessa, and Ector County each also remove 20% of value (and the hospital district 10%), a real homestead is taxed on far less than the full value on every line. Applying those percentage exemptions on top of the school-district homestead drops the estimate to roughly $2,180 a year - an effective rate near 1.09%. The calculator above does not model them, so treat its output as the conservative (high) end; the county-wide ACS median effective rate of about 1.27% sits between the two.

If the owner is 65 or older, the bill falls further. The over-65 additions - $60,000 on the ISD, $40,000 on Odessa College, $25,000 each on the county and hospital district, and $15,000 on the city - stack on top of the percentage exemptions, and on lower-value homes can zero out several lines entirely.

Limitations:

• Your total varies by school district, city, and any special district covering your parcel; a Goldsmith, Ector County ESD, or Midland-side Odessa parcel uses a different stack.
• The 20% local-option homestead exemptions (and over-65, disability, and disabled-veteran exemptions) vary by unit and lower the bill substantially; this simplified example applies only the school-district homestead.
• Ector County's exact penalty-and-interest schedule was not available from an official source in this pass and is not stated here.
• New-construction homes are often taxed on land only in the first year, then jump once the structure is on the roll.
• This is an estimate, not a parcel-exact bill. The typical effective rate is a Census ACS estimate, not a guaranteed rate.