Jefferson County Property Tax & Sales Tax

Jefferson County Tax Rates - At a Glance

Jefferson County Current Tax Rates Summary

Tax Type	Rate	Notes
Property Tax (combined)	~2.30% of value	No single county rate - the sum of school district, city, county, drainage district, navigation district, and port on a City of Beaumont / Beaumont ISD parcel. Representative nominal stack; other school districts in the county run from ~1.67% to ~2.81%; typical effective rate runs about 1.53%.
Annual Vehicle (Car) Tax	None	Texas levies no annual value-based vehicle property tax
Sales Tax	8.25%	6.25% state + 1.5% city + 0.5% Jefferson County in Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Nederland; groceries and most unprepared food exempt
Homestead Exemption	$140,000 school + 10% cap	Over-65 adds $60,000 school exemption; Jefferson County, the Port of Beaumont, Drainage District #6, and the Sabine Neches Navigation District each grant 20% plus $40,000 over-65
Due Date	January 31	2025 bills were due February 2, 2026 because January 31 fell on a Saturday; protest deadline May 15; exemption applications due April 30

Jefferson County Property Tax

Jefferson County property tax comes in two numbers that are easy to confuse. The county's own adopted rate is $0.357000 per $100 of value for the 2025 tax year - and it is only the Jefferson County government's portion. Your actual bill is the sum of every overlapping taxing unit that covers your parcel. Combined, the typical total effective rate in Jefferson County is about 1.53% of market value - an estimate from Census ACS 2024 5-year data (median real estate taxes paid $2,600 divided by median home value $169,500). Because the mix of taxing units differs from parcel to parcel, there is no single "Jefferson County rate" for a full bill; the figures below are worked examples.

Jefferson County levies one consolidated rate: unlike many Texas counties it adds no separate Road and Bridge, Farm-to-Market, or Lateral Road unit, so the county appears once on your bill rather than twice. We confirmed that by absence - no such unit appears anywhere in the Jefferson Central Appraisal District's complete 30-entity rate summary, which lists every taxing unit in the county.

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

School district City County Drainage, navigation & port districts

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

Taxing unit	Rate /$100	Type
Beaumont ISD	$0.934810	School
City of Beaumont	$0.659663	City
Jefferson County	$0.357000	County
Drainage District #6	$0.184235	Drainage
Sabine Neches Navigation District	$0.088000	Navigation
Port of Beaumont	$0.080273	Port
Nominal total	~$2.303981	~2.30%

Rates from the Jefferson Central Appraisal District 2025 Entity Tax Rate Summary. The appraisal district publishes its own combination figure for this stack - "BEAUMONT ISD 2.303981" - on the second page of the same document, and the six component rates above sum to exactly that number, an independent confirmation of the stack. This example is for a City of Beaumont / Beaumont ISD parcel; your total depends on your city, school district, and special districts.

The other school districts in the county

Jefferson County has an unusually wide internal spread. The appraisal district publishes a combined rate for each school district in the county, and the gap between the cheapest and the most expensive is more than $1.13 per $100 - on a $170,000 home that is roughly $1,900 a year for the same house in the same county.

Published 2025 combined rates by school district (Jefferson Central Appraisal District)

School district combination	Combined rate /$100	Approx.
Hardin-Jefferson ISD	$1.671100	~1.67%
Hamshire-Fannett ISD	$1.786806	~1.79%
Nederland ISD	$2.087155	~2.09%
Sabine Pass ISD	$2.191463	~2.19%
Beaumont ISD	$2.303981	~2.30%
Port Neches-Groves ISD / City of Groves	$2.494339	~2.49%
Port Neches-Groves ISD / City of Port Neches	$2.587413	~2.59%
Port Arthur ISD	$2.810110	~2.81%

These are the appraisal district's own published combinations for the 2025 tax year, not our arithmetic. The differences come from a mix of school rates (Nederland ISD $0.898630 at the low end, Port Arthur ISD $1.270416 at the high end), sharply different city rates, and which drainage, navigation, and port districts cover the parcel. We use the Beaumont ISD combination as this page's representative stack because Beaumont is the county seat and the largest city.

Where your property-tax dollar goes

Beaumont ISD ~40.6% City ~28.6% County ~15.5% Drainage District #6 ~8.0% Navigation ~3.8% Port ~3.5%

On a typical City of Beaumont / Beaumont ISD parcel, Beaumont ISD is about 40.6% of the nominal bill ($0.934810 / $2.303981 nominal total), the City of Beaumont about 28.6%, Jefferson County about 15.5%, Drainage District #6 about 8.0%, the Sabine Neches Navigation District about 3.8%, and the Port of Beaumont about 3.5%. Percentages are rounded and use the nominal posted rates before any exemption - after the $140,000 school-district homestead exemption the school slice shrinks sharply, which is the main reason the county's typical effective rate (about 1.53%) sits well below the nominal stacked rate (about 2.30%).

Who bills and collects in Jefferson County

Jefferson County follows the standard Texas split between two separate agencies:

• The Jefferson County Tax Assessor-Collector (Kate Carroll) bills and collects the tax. Search your account and pay through jeffcotax.com; the office is at 1149 Pearl Street, Beaumont, Texas 77701, 409-835-8516.
• The Jefferson Central Appraisal District sets appraised values, processes exemptions, and runs protests, at jcad.org (4610 S 4th St, Beaumont, TX 77705; Beaumont 409-840-9944, Mid County 409-727-4611; chief appraiser Angela Bellard, RPA, RES, AAS).

If you want to dispute what your home is worth, that is the appraisal district. If you want to pay a bill or check what is owed, that is the tax office. The appraisal district states plainly on its own site that "the county tax assessor does not determine property values or tax rates."

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 must apply by April 30. For a Beaumont 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, plus a further $5,000 local-option amount from Beaumont ISD.

The local-option exemptions in Jefferson County split unusually cleanly into two camps:

• Jefferson County, the Port of Beaumont, Drainage District #6, and the Sabine Neches Navigation District each grant a 20% local-option homestead exemption plus $40,000 for over-65 and for disabled owners. Those four units are about 30.8% of the nominal Beaumont stack between them, so the 20% is worth real money.
• The City of Beaumont grants no percentage homestead exemption, but does grant $17,500 for over-65 and for disabled owners.
• Beaumont ISD grants no local-option percentage homestead beyond the statewide $140,000, and adds $5,000 for over-65 owners on top of the statewide $60,000, plus $60,000 for disabled owners.

Local-option amounts differ elsewhere in the county: the City of Bevil Oaks and Port Neches-Groves ISD grant 20%, Sabine Pass ISD grants 20% with $10,000 over-65, Hardin-Jefferson ISD grants 15%, the City of Port Arthur grants 20% with $25,000 over-65, and the City of Nederland grants $15,000 over-65 with no percentage exemption. Check your own units before assuming the Beaumont figures apply.

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.

Key dates: 2025 taxes were due February 2, 2026 rather than the usual January 31, because January 31, 2026 fell on a Saturday and Texas Tax Code Section 1.06 rolls any deadline landing on a weekend or holiday forward to the next business day. In an ordinary year the deadline is January 31 with delinquency the following day. 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. We were not able to extract Jefferson County's specific penalty-and-interest schedule from an official source in this pass, so no penalty percentages are stated on this page - confirm those with the tax office directly.

How to protest your appraisal

Protests go to the Jefferson Central Appraisal District, not the tax office. You can pursue an informal review with an appraiser or a formal Appraisal Review Board (ARB) hearing. File and track everything at jcad.org, which also hosts the district's online protest system, or call 409-840-9944 (Beaumont) or 409-727-4611 (Mid County). 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 Jefferson County property tax

Sources: the Jefferson Central Appraisal District 2025 Entity Tax Rate Summary (every county, city, school, port, drainage, and navigation district rate and exemption used on this page), the Jefferson Central Appraisal District (appraisal, exemptions, protests), the Jefferson County Tax Office (billing, collection, and the February 2, 2026 due date), the Texas Comptroller, 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 Jefferson 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 Jefferson County you register and title through the Jefferson County Tax Assessor-Collector, the same office that collects property tax.

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.

Jefferson County Sales Tax

The combined sales tax rate in Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Nederland is 8.25%. Jefferson County does levy a county sales and use tax - 0.5%, listed by the Texas Comptroller under local code 4123002 - so the local 2% ceiling here is split between the city and the county rather than taken entirely by the city.

Beaumont (Jefferson County) sales tax components

Component	Rate
Texas state rate	6.25%
City of Beaumont	1.50%
Jefferson County	0.50%
Combined rate	8.25%

Port Arthur and Nederland use the same composition and also reach 8.25%. In several unincorporated parts of the county there is no city rate at all, and instead a Jefferson County Emergency Services District levies 1.5% - Emergency Services Districts #3, #4, and #5 each appear in the Comptroller's list at that rate - which arrives at the same 8.25% total by a different route.

Texas law caps the total local portion at 2.0%. This is a shared ceiling, not additive past 2%: once the city, county, and any special-purpose district rates add up to 2%, no further local rate can stack on top. That is why 8.25% is the maximum combined sales tax anywhere in Texas, including Jefferson County. Groceries and most unprepared food are exempt from sales tax.

Real Example: a $169,500 Beaumont Home

Here is how the numbers flow on a representative $169,500 City of Beaumont / Beaumont ISD home (the county median value) with a homestead exemption (owner under 65), applying the school-district homestead to the school unit only and no other local-option exemptions:

• Market value: $169,500.
• Homestead exemption: the $140,000 school-district exemption drops the Beaumont ISD taxable value to $29,500. The other five units tax the full $169,500 in this simplified example.
• Stacked total: school $29,500 × 0.934810% = ~$276; city $169,500 × 0.659663% = ~$1,118; county $169,500 × 0.357000% = ~$605; Drainage District #6 ~$312; Sabine Neches Navigation District ~$149; Port of Beaumont ~$136.
• Estimated annual bill: about $2,597 per year.
• Monthly equivalent: about $216 per month.
• Effective rate: about 1.53% of market value in this simplified example - which lands almost exactly on the county-wide ACS median effective rate of about 1.53%.

The 20% local-option exemptions lower this further. Jefferson County, the Port of Beaumont, Drainage District #6, and the Sabine Neches Navigation District each tax only 80% of a homestead's value. Applying all four drops those lines from about $1,203 to about $962, cutting the estimate to roughly $2,356 a year - a saving of about $241, and an effective rate of about 1.39%. The calculator above does not model that, so treat its output as the conservative end.

The same home in a different school district tells a different story. The Beaumont ISD stack used here is $2.303981 per $100. On the Port Arthur ISD combination of $2.810110 the same $169,500 home would carry roughly $860 a year more before exemptions; on the Hardin-Jefferson ISD combination of $1.671100 it would carry roughly $1,070 a year less. Which school district you buy in matters more in Jefferson County than in most Texas counties.

Limitations:

• Your total varies by school district, city, and any special district covering your parcel; the county's published combinations range from $1.671100 to $2.810110 per $100.
• Local-option exemptions (plus over-65, disability, and disabled-veteran exemptions) vary by unit and can lower the bill further; this simplified example applies only the school-district homestead.
• Emergency Services District, Water Control and Improvement District #10, Trinity Bay Conservation District, and Northwest Forest MUD levies are not included, and we did not verify which parcels fall inside them.
• Jefferson 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.