When April showed me the new-form Dallas County property tax statement we received this week, every one of my conspiracy-theory alarm bells went off. Instead of the usual envelope chock full of data and comparisons to prior years, it was a tiny postcard that told us what we owed; that the County had saved a precise $26,318 by going this route; and a myriad number of ways we could dig up the info that was in the old reports.
I was enraged -- obviously, this was an attempt to obscure the faux tax increase that Texas Counties love to pull by raising the estimated value of your property and not the rate of your taxes. I seethed as I went online, relishing my upcoming performance at the DCAD offices and mentally writing my award-winning expose on how Dallas County was trying to pull a fast one...
But then, as I pulled up the report from Dallas County -- a report that was less difficult to find than I would have imagined -- I discovered that they'd dropped our home value by 5% year-over-year and that our tax payment had actually decreased.
Apparently economic realities have caught up even with tax appraisers. So now I have to wonder, how will our cash-strapped schools and public works be impacted by the $152 less they're getting from me this year?
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John McClelland Verified
School bonds that everyone keeps passing :)
1 week, 5 days ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )
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