Brazos County tax assessor announces correct deadline to adopt county's property tax rate

The Eagle
Bailey Brown
Sept 23, 2022

Brazos County Tax Assessor Kristeen Roe notified Brazos County Commissioners on Thursday that the originally known deadline to approve a tax rate was actually much later than anticipated.

For the first time, Brazos County will fall under an exception to the tax code whereas the governing body must adopt a tax rate before the later of Sept. 30 or on the 60th day after the date the certified appraisal roll is received, according to Section 26.05 of the tax code.

This means that the original Sept. 29 deadline is being extended to Oct. 21 because the Brazos Central Appraisal District provided the certified appraisal roll much later than expected, Roe said.

“Every year on July 25 the appraisal district’s chief appraiser is supposed to certify the values to all of the taxing jurisdictions,” she said Friday. “Legislatures say on July 25 if the certified numbers are not available yet, then the chief appraiser must provide a certified estimate. This year because of the steps that are being taken at the appraisal district, and the protests that were there in the volume they were dealing with, on July 25 they were not in a position to certify at least 95% of the roll.”

It wasn’t until Aug. 22 that the county received their certified values rather than the estimates, which called for an extension on the deadline to adopt a tax rate, she said.

“This time of year I am reviewing everything and making sure we got the correct information back from all of the different taxing jurisdictions,” she said. “As I was going back through everything I stopped and thought, ‘Wait a minute.’ This is the first year since it has been available that we have ever been in a position to need to use the estimate to calculate for everyone, and we did not receive our certified roll — the actual number — until almost a month later.”

Commissioners will hold a workshop at 1:30 p.m. Monday to discuss the tax code and the tax rate. They are set to discuss and consider the approval of a tax rate up to $0.4735 per $100 valuation at a 10 a.m. Tuesday meeting.