To control your tax bill, go to rate hearings

Likely most Texas property owners were stunned last spring when they opened their tax appraisals to see a marked increase over last year.

Texans are faced with a near certain fact: Year in and year out, their property tax bills go up. Rising appraisals usually get the blame, but in fact, that’s not where the fault lies.

Contrary to popular opinion, whether or not your taxes will go up doesn’t depend on your appraisal as much as it does on the tax rates now being adopted by local governments — cities, counties, school districts and special districts — across the state.

Fortunately, the public has an opportunity to weigh in.

Tax rates must be publicized beforehand and adopted in a public meeting. Local governments are crafting their budgets for the next fiscal year and setting their tax rates at the level necessary to fund those budgets.

It’s simple math: the rate applied to the appraised value of the property in their jurisdiction (including your home) must raise enough revenue to pay for their budgets.

So if you really want to keep your tax bill under control, making sure your appraisal is fair is only the first part of the job.

The real — and harder — work is participating in the local budget process that drives tax bills.

That’s no small feat. Texas has 254 counties, more than 1,000 school districts and over 1,200 cities.

That means at least three processes to monitor and probably more, because in excess of 2,000 special-purpose taxing districts fund a wide variety of local government services, including junior colleges, hospitals, municipal utilities, groundwater conservation, levee improvement, navigation, county development, drainage or even mosquito control.

A homeowner or business often has to pay taxes to as many as half a dozen taxing entities, making participation in the rate-setting process a time-consuming, confounding and overwhelming task.

The public is aided by Texas’ “truth-in-taxation law,” which provides transparency in how local taxing districts determine their tax rates.

My organization, the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, has long supported an open budget and tax process and has worked to ensure that the public is provided relevant, accurate and understandable information by the various taxing entities.

It hasn’t always been this way. As seemingly mysterious as the process is today, it used to be much worse.

Prior to the 1979 passage of truth-in-taxation legislation that created the modern property tax system, property was valued separately by each taxing jurisdiction.

Taxable values and tax rates on the same property could vary widely from one local governmental entity to another.

While today’s process has provided a much-needed system of checks and balances, it does not provide automatic protections for consumers.

The bottom line is, for concerned taxpayers to effectively impact property taxation, they must do more than focus on or protest their appraisals.

There’s no substitute for active participation in the local budget process. That means taking the time to attend hearings and communicate your position on proposed budgets and tax rates.

This story was originally published August 15, 2016 at 5:14 PM with the headline "To control your tax bill, go to rate hearings."