Taylor County Property Tax & Sales Tax

Taylor County Tax Rates - At a Glance

Taylor County Current Tax Rates Summary

Tax Type	Rate	Notes
Property Tax (combined)	~2.27% of value	No single county rate - the sum of school district, city, and county on a City of Abilene / Abilene ISD parcel. Representative nominal stack; typical effective rate runs about 1.37% after exemptions.
Annual Vehicle (Car) Tax	None	Texas levies no annual value-based vehicle property tax
Sales Tax	8.25%	6.25% state + 1.00% city + 0.50% property-tax relief + 0.50% Development Corporation of Abilene; groceries and most unprepared food exempt
Homestead Exemption	$140,000 school + 10% cap	Statewide school-district exemption + $60,000 over-65; county and city local-option amounts not published in our source pass
Due Date	January 31	Delinquent February 1; statewide protest deadline May 15; exemption applications due April 30

Taylor County Property Tax

Taylor County property tax comes in two numbers that are easy to confuse. The county's own adopted rate is $0.557800 per $100 of value for the 2025 tax year - and it is only the Taylor County government's portion. Your actual bill is the sum of every overlapping taxing unit that covers your parcel: your school district, your city, and the county. Combined, the typical total effective rate in Taylor County is about 1.37% of market value - an estimate from Census ACS 2024 5-year data (median real estate taxes paid $2,728 divided by median home value $198,600). Because the mix of taxing units differs from parcel to parcel, there is no single "Taylor County rate" for a full bill; the figures below are worked examples.

Taylor County adopted its rate in two components: maintenance and operations $0.520100 plus debt service $0.037700. The debt-service share is small, so the county's rate is almost entirely operations. Taylor 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 adopted-rate table.

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

School district City County

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

Taxing unit	Rate /$100	Type
Abilene ISD	$0.958000	School
City of Abilene	$0.750600	City
Taylor County	$0.557800	County
Nominal total	~$2.266400	~2.27%

Rates from the Central Appraisal District of Taylor County 2025 adopted-rate table, corroborated exactly by the City of Abilene's official local tax-rate schedule (Abilene ISD $0.958000 = M&O $0.742100 + I&S $0.215900; City of Abilene $0.750600 = M&O $0.585100 + I&S $0.165500; Taylor County $0.557800 = M&O $0.520100 + I&S $0.037700). This example is for a City of Abilene / Abilene ISD parcel; your total depends on your city and school district.

Where your property-tax dollar goes

Abilene ISD ~42.3% City ~33.1% County ~24.6%

On a typical City of Abilene / Abilene ISD parcel, Abilene ISD is about 42.3% of the nominal bill ($0.958000 / $2.266400 nominal total), the City of Abilene about 33.1%, and Taylor County about 24.6%. Because there is no hospital or college district, the three units split the bill more evenly than in most Texas counties - and the county's near-quarter share is large, a direct result of Taylor County carrying a relatively high rate for a small, urbanized area. Percentages are rounded and use the nominal posted rates before any exemption - after the $140,000 school-district homestead exemption the school slice shrinks, which is a main reason the county's typical effective rate (about 1.37%) sits below the nominal stacked rate (about 2.27%).

Who appraises, bills, and collects in Taylor County

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

• The Central Appraisal District of Taylor County sets appraised values, processes exemptions, runs protests, and collects the property tax - it hosts the property search and the online payment portal (through its Point and Pay vendor) and issues receipts. 1534 S. Treadaway Blvd., Abilene, TX 79602; P.O. Box 1800, Abilene, TX 79604; 325-676-9381; customerservice@cadtx.org. Chief appraiser Gary Earnest.
• Because the appraisal district collects, there is no separate county tax office issuing your property tax bill; vehicle registration and titling are handled separately through the state and county motor-vehicle system.

For practical purposes, both value questions and payment start at taylor-cad.org.

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 Abilene 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.

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.

Taylor County and the City of Abilene may grant their own local-option homestead exemptions, and the gap between the county-wide effective rate (about 1.37%) and the simplified stack below suggests real homestead relief beyond the school-district exemption. Those local-option amounts were not published in a clean per-entity table in our source pass, so they are not modeled in the estimate on this page and are queued for follow-up - treat the estimate as the conservative (high) end.

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 a Taylor 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 Central Appraisal District of Taylor County, which publishes its Appraisal Review Board hearing procedures and taxpayer remedies and runs the property search and appeals process from its home page. File and track everything at taylor-cad.org or call 325-676-9381. 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 Taylor County property tax

Sources: the Central Appraisal District of Taylor County 2025 adopted-rate table (every taxing unit's adopted rate and M&O / debt-service split), the City of Abilene local tax-rate schedule (corroboration of the three-unit stack and the sales-tax composition), 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 Taylor 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.

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.

Taylor County Sales Tax

The combined sales tax rate in the City of Abilene is 8.25% - the Texas maximum - and the way it is divided up is unusual, because the city publishes a dedicated property-tax-relief component. Of the 2.00% local share, 1.00% is the regular city rate, 0.50% is dedicated to property-tax relief, and 0.50% funds the Development Corporation of Abilene (Type A economic and industrial development). Taylor County itself levies no county sales tax.

City of Abilene (Taylor County) sales tax components

Component	Rate
Texas state rate	6.25%
City of Abilene - regular	1.00%
City of Abilene - property-tax relief	0.50%
Development Corporation of Abilene (Type A)	0.50%
Combined rate	8.25%

Texas law caps the total local portion at 2.0%. This is a shared ceiling, not additive past 2%: once the city and special-purpose rates add up to 2%, no further local rate can stack on top. Abilene reaches that ceiling exactly - 1.00 + 0.50 + 0.50 - which is why 8.25% is the maximum combined sales tax here as everywhere else in Texas. Groceries and most unprepared food are exempt from sales tax.

Real Example: a $198,600 Abilene Home

Here is how the numbers flow on a representative $198,600 City of Abilene / Abilene 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 local-option exemptions:

• Market value: $198,600.
• Homestead exemption: the $140,000 school-district exemption drops the Abilene ISD taxable value to $58,600. The city and county tax the full $198,600 in this simplified example.
• Stacked total: school $58,600 × 0.958000% = ~$561; city $198,600 × 0.750600% = ~$1,491; county $198,600 × 0.557800% = ~$1,108.
• Estimated annual bill: about $3,160 per year.
• Monthly equivalent: about $263 per month.
• Effective rate: about 1.59% of market value in this simplified example.

Real homestead bills come in lower. The county-wide ACS median effective rate is about 1.37% - below this simplified 1.59% - because most homesteads also benefit from the 10% appraisal cap and any Taylor County or City of Abilene local-option homestead exemptions, which this example does not model. If the owner is 65 or older, the $60,000 ISD over-65 exemption lowers the school line further, and the school-tax ceiling can freeze it going forward.

Limitations:

• Your total varies by school district and city; a Wylie ISD parcel or a Merkel, Tye, or Tuscola parcel uses a different stack.
• Taylor County and City of Abilene local-option homestead exemptions (plus over-65, disability, and disabled-veteran exemptions) can lower the bill and are not modeled here.
• Taylor 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.