Texas has no state property tax and no state personal income tax — property tax is set entirely by local taxing units layered on top of each other at a single address: the county, the city, the school district (ISD), often a community college district, sometimes a hospital district, and, in many newer suburbs, one or more special districts (see Section 4). Because there's no income tax to fall back on, property tax carries an unusually large share of the load: it's the single largest source of Texas state-and-local tax revenue, and Texas's effective property tax rate (around 1.4%–1.5% depending on methodology) is consistently ranked among the roughly ten highest in the country. The honest framing for a Texas relocation: no income tax, but you pay for a meaningful share of that back in property tax.
One structural wrinkle worth knowing before you buy: Texas is a non-disclosure state — actual sale prices aren't required to be recorded publicly the way they are in many other states. Appraisal districts build valuations from mass-appraisal models and purchased MLS data rather than public deed records, which means neither you nor your appraisal district can simply look up what your neighbor's house actually sold for. In practice this makes a solo do-it-yourself appraisal protest harder to support with hard comparables than it would be in a disclosure state — professional property-tax protest firms with MLS access have a real information edge here.
We deliberately don't publish specific city/county/school millage rates on this page as a single fixed number — they're reset annually by several independent governing bodies and would be stale within months. Section 5 gives sourced, dated representative ranges instead; your county appraisal district always has the current figures.
This is the figure most likely to be stale anywhere else you read it, so it's worth being precise: Texas voters have raised the general homestead exemption for school district taxes three times in three years, most recently via Proposition 13 on the November 2025 ballot (implementing Senate Bill 4), which passed with just under 80% approval. The exemption went from $25,000 (its long-standing historical level), to $40,000, to $100,000 in 2023, to its current $140,000, effective for the 2025 tax year forward. Any source still citing $100,000 as the current figure is out of date.
Homeowners 65 or older, or disabled, get an additional $60,000 exemption on top of the general $140,000 — a combined $200,000 off assessed value for school taxes — via a companion measure, Proposition 11 (2025). Once a homeowner qualifies as 65+ or disabled, their school district tax bill is frozen ("ceilinged") at the dollar amount owed the year they first qualified; it can go down if rates or exemptions drop further, but the frozen dollar amount itself won't rise due to future value increases. That freeze applies only to school taxes, not to city, county, or other local rates. Counties, cities, and other taxing units may (but aren't required to) layer their own additional local homestead exemptions on top of the state figures.
Disabled veterans rated 100% disabled (or individually unemployable) receive a full exemption from all property taxes on their homestead, with no dollar cap; veterans with lower disability ratings receive a tiered dollar exemption that varies by rating band — ask your county appraisal district's veteran-exemption desk for the current table rather than relying on a specific number here, since we found inconsistent secondary-source figures for the exact tiers.
For a property with a homestead exemption, Texas law caps how much the appraisal district can raise the taxable (capped) value in any year to 10% above the prior year's appraised value, plus the value of any new improvements — regardless of how much the home's actual market value rose. The cap doesn't apply in your first year of ownership/homestead (you're taxed on full market value that first year); it kicks in starting the second year. It's a cap on taxable-value growth, not on the tax rate or the total bill, and it resets to full market value whenever the home sells to a new owner.
A separate, temporary provision worth knowing about if you're buying a second home, rental, or land rather than a primary residence: a "circuit breaker" cap limits annual appraised-value increases to 20% on non-homesteaded real property valued at $5 million or less. It took effect for the 2024 tax year and, as of this writing, is authorized only through the 2026 tax year unless the Legislature renews it in its next session — worth a direct check if this applies to your purchase.
This is the single biggest DFW-specific gotcha we'd want a buyer to know before falling in love with a brand-new subdivision in the fast-growing edges of Collin, Denton, or outer Tarrant County. A Municipal Utility District (MUD) is its own small unit of Texas government — separate from the city, the county, and any HOA — created to finance the water, sewer, drainage, and sometimes road infrastructure a new subdivision needs before city utilities reach it. The MUD issues bonds to build that infrastructure, then levies its own property tax on homes inside its boundary to repay the debt, on top of city, county, and school taxes. A Public Improvement District (PID) is different in kind — not an independent government, but a special assessment area created by city council to fund public improvements (entry monuments, landscaping, sometimes infrastructure), collected as a line item on the tax bill.
Both are common in new master-planned communities across the fast-growth edges of Collin and Denton counties (and increasingly outer Tarrant), and both add real, ongoing cost: MUD rates typically run roughly $0.50–$1.50 per $100 of assessed value on top of base rates, and PID assessments typically run roughly $1,500–$5,000+ per year depending on the community. Combined, a home that would otherwise carry a 2.2%–2.3% effective rate can see that climb toward 3%+ inside a MUD/PID community — on a $500,000 home, the difference between roughly $11,000–$12,000/year and $16,000+/year, i.e., an extra $300–$450+ per month. MUD rates generally decline over time as the district's debt is paid down and its tax base grows, so the newest phase of a still-building master-planned community is often the most expensive on this specific line item, not the cheapest — an older phase of the same community can carry a meaningfully lower rate.
Texas law requires disclosure: a seller inside a MUD must give the buyer a statutory "Notice to Purchasers" disclosing the district's current tax rate and outstanding bonded debt before the buyer signs the sales contract (Texas Water Code §49.455); a similar notice is required for PID assessments (Texas Property Code §5.014). Both disclosures are legally required, but they typically surface only once you're deep into a specific property's paperwork — the neighborhood-level "is this area MUD territory" question is exactly the kind of thing worth asking your agent proactively, before you fall for a specific house. Older, already-built-out DFW suburbs (Plano's core, Allen, Coppell, Richardson, Southlake, Colleyville, Keller) generally don't carry MUD/PID assessments; the newest master-planned communities on the exurban fringe generally do.
Each Texas county has its own central appraisal district (CAD), a separate entity from the tax collector, responsible for valuing property and hearing protests:
The protest process is the same statewide: an informal review with district staff, followed if needed by a formal hearing before the Appraisal Review Board (ARB) — an independent citizen panel, not appraisal-district staff. The deadline to file a protest is May 15, or the 30th day after your appraisal notice was mailed, whichever is later.
Representative combined base rates (county + city + school + community college, before any MUD/PID) for tax year 2025, the most recent adopted rates at publication — DFW taxing units typically adopt new rates each fall, so confirm the current year's figure before relying on any of these for a purchase decision:
| County | Representative city | Approx. combined base rate | MUD/PID common? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dallas | City of Dallas | ~2.22% | Uncommon — built-out core |
| Tarrant | Fort Worth | ~2.24% | Uncommon — built-out core |
| Tarrant | Arlington | City rate alone: $1.09/$100 (a 20-year low) | Uncommon |
| Collin | Plano | ~1.71% | Uncommon — largely built out |
| Collin | Frisco | ~1.68% base | Mixed — common in newer phases |
| Collin | McKinney | ~1.75% base | Mixed — common in newer subdivisions |
| Tarrant / Denton | Southlake | Not separately computed — see DCAD/TAD | Uncommon — largely built out |
| Denton | City of Denton | ~1.99% | Mixed — common on the growing periphery |
Sources: each county appraisal district's published rates and Community Impact's Collin County FY2025-26 rate roundup, cross-checked September 2026. Figures exclude MUD/PID assessments, which (per Section 4) can add roughly 0.5–1.5+ percentage points in newer Collin/Denton developments. These are nominal rates on assessed value, not necessarily your actual bill once the homestead exemption and 10% cap are applied — confirm your specific address's current-year rate with the relevant CAD.
The homestead exemption is not automatic — you have to apply once (it renews automatically after that as long as you still qualify and live there). Your county appraisal district is the authoritative source for this year's actual rates, exemption amounts, and deadlines:
The Texas Comptroller's Property Tax Assistance section is a good statewide starting point for homestead exemption rules, and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality maintains a searchable directory of all Texas MUDs if you want to check a specific area independently before writing an offer.
The mechanics in Sections 1, 3, and 4 are structural and don't change often. The exemption figures in Section 2 changed via a November 2025 statewide election and could change again through future legislative sessions and ballot measures — we'll re-verify these periodically. The rate table in Section 5 reflects the most recent adopted rates we could find as of September 2026; DFW taxing units generally adopt new rates each fall, so a rate cited here may be superseded by the time you're reading this. If you spot something on this page that's changed, or notice a broken link, we'd like to know — see our contact information.