TEMPLE, Texas — Bell County locals are tired of rising property taxes. An online petition to reduce taxes already gained 1300 signatures in five days. But while people have called for action from the Bell County Tax Appraisal District, there are several reasons property taxes have increased for homes and businesses, despite the current strain on the economy.
6 News spoke to Bell County Chief appraiser Billy White about those tax increases Wednesday. He said there are several factors at work.
Properties were assessed before the pandemic hit
The Bell County Tax appraisal district accesses property values on January 1 of each year according to the Texas property tax code.
At the beginning of 2020, White said there was a lot of demand for houses, and that affected prices. Later In April, Bell County realtors only had about two months of housing inventory available to sell, which White said was a record low.
White said things may be different for some commercial property, as it is not assessed in the same way, but any effect COVID-19 had on property values will not be reflected in property values until next year.
Properties in Bell County were also assessed by the state
The Texas Comptroller does it's own property tax assessment of local properties every two years. When the state has access to information that the local tax office does not, that independent study can change property values.
White said new information from that state assessment showed several Bell County businesses were significantly behind the current market rate, specifically in Temple and Troy.
"The commercial values were somewhere between 60 to 80 percent of what they thought the value should have been and we did make some significant increases to gain some of that back, " White said.
That means those commercial properties would see a large jump in value and taxes at the same rate the outbreak has hurt business owners.
White said it's not something that he wants to see, but state law does not give him the option to adjust those values incrementally.
"We're sympathetic to it. It's not something we like to do to increase values," White said. "Especially when business owners are already hurting at this point."
Texas property tax relief laws don't apply in a pandemic
Texas law does allow for a temporary tax exemption for property damaged by a disaster, thanks to a bill passed after Hurricane Harvey in 2017. But Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton ruled it does not apply in the case.
The opinion of the Attorney General states, "Section 11.35 of the Tax Code creates a temporary tax exemption for qualified property damaged by a disaster, as declared by the Governor. A court would likely conclude that the Legislature intended to limit the temporary tax exemption to apply to property physically harmed as a result of a declared disaster. Thus, purely economic, non-physical damage to property caused by the COVID-19 disaster is not eligible for the temporary tax exemption provided by section 11.35 of the Tax Code."
This means that any challenges to a property's tax value are limited to challenging what the value should have been on January 1st, 2020, and not afterward. While this would not make a difference for homes, businesses that have their property values accessed based on income would not be able to get re-accessed.
Still, White did say he encourages people to protest values if they have been significantly impacted as the appraisal review board may have some room to work with property owners.
Property owners have until the end of Monday, June 15, to protest property values. White said the posted end date of June 13 falls on a Saturday, which makes the last day rollover to next week.
Bell County residents can start the protest process here.
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