Texas appraisal districts have economic motive to value high. The state captures most of the windfall through school recapture. The 25%-of-savings consultants chase only the biggest cases. Most homeowners pay too much — and don't know it. TaxStand pulls your CAD record, runs the equal-and-uniform analysis, and produces a hearing-ready protest packet for a flat fee. You file it. You keep all the savings.
No email required. We do not store your address or account ID after the analysis runs.
Some county appraisal-district websites are currently broken or bot-blocked. We can still build your case from the county tax-office portal — different system, usually accessible. Pick your county below to get a one-click portal link and the exact steps.
Free preview. We extract value history and run the market-divergence analysis. Sqft and year-built are not on most tax-office portals, so the unequal-appraisal arm is skipped — but the §41.41(a)(1) market-value argument stands on its own.
Drag this link to your bookmarks bar: 📎 Send to TaxStand
Then: open your county portal, navigate to your account detail page, click this bookmarklet. The page text auto-flows back to TaxStand. (Stays in your real browser session — no bot detection ever.)
A friend of ours in Johnson County bought his home in 2024. By 2025, the county had appraised it at $481,814 — a 73% increase over what it was valued at three years earlier. The same county had not raised the appraisal on a comparable newer home one neighborhood over. When he asked his county representatives what to do, they told him not to worry about re-filing his homestead exemption — that it would "just carry over." That isn't actually how Texas homestead law works, and he was lucky to discover his exemption had been carried correctly anyway. The casual misinformation is what stuck with him: the people whose job it is to administer the system can't reliably explain it to the people paying into it.
He had two options. Hire one of the contingency-fee protest firms and hand over 25%–40% of whatever he saved. Or walk into the appraisal board with a manila folder and hope for the best.
He picked the manila folder, and still got $70,000 knocked off. He should have gotten more. Based on the public CAD data for his neighborhood, his appraisal supported a $163,000 reduction, not $70,000. The reason he didn't get there is the only thing that separates a successful protest from an unsuccessful one — a professional-looking evidence packet with the right numbers in the right places.
That's what TaxStand builds. For the cost of a steak dinner.
Type the property ID from your county appraisal notice. We never ask for SSN, banking info, or anything you wouldn't paste into a public search.
We pull the public appraisal records for every comparable home in your neighborhood, find the ones that hurt your case the most, and assemble them into a single evidence-grade PDF.
Upload the PDF to your county appraisal district's protest portal by May 15. Show up to the informal review. The packet has talking points for what to say. Most protests settle there — no formal hearing needed.
Up to 15 neighboring properties, sorted by appraised dollars-per-square-foot. The single most damning comparison gets its own page. Your appraised premium over the neighborhood median, calculated to the dollar.
If your homestead exemption lapsed (extremely common after a property sale), the packet detects it and tells you exactly what to file to restore it — often worth more in tax savings than the protest itself.
Adjacent disrepair, recent purchase price below appraisal, foundation issues, contractor quotes for needed repairs — the qualitative facts that the county doesn't know but you do. Rendered as material evidence the review board has to consider.
Word-for-word phrases to use during your informal review and formal hearing. Cite the relevant Texas Tax Code sections. Rebut the appraiser's most common pushback patterns. Know what NOT to say.
Step-by-step walkthrough of your specific county's protest portal. Deadlines. Form numbers. Where to upload. What to expect in the days after.
Three options if you want to protest your Texas property tax. Here's what each actually costs and gets you.
Multiple Texas property tax protest firms operate on a contingency model, charging 25%–40% of first-year savings. We don't compete with any of them on representation — we just think there should be an option that doesn't take a cut of homeowners' savings.
The information that's actually worth knowing is short. Most homeowners overpay on their property taxes because no one walks them through it. We wrote two long-form guides so you don't have to learn this the hard way.
What new buyers are told about the homestead exemption is often wrong — and the mistake can cost you tens of thousands. Real statute references, real math on a real Texas property, the §11.431 back-claim window most homeowners don't know exists.
8 minute read · ~3,500 words
A step-by-step DIY protest guide for Texas homeowners who don't want a contingency-fee firm. The two grounds, every important date, the five-step process, what evidence actually wins, and when DIY makes sense vs. when paying for help is the right call.
12 minute read · ~3,900 words
A real Texas homeowner walked into his appraisal review with no help and got $70,000 off. He left $97,000 on the table. Here's exactly what happened, in publicly verifiable CAD data — and what a complete packet would have done differently.
10 minute read · ~2,600 words
Different from a protest: this is for fixing the factual record of your property — phantom structures, wrong square footage, incorrect year built. Retroactive refunds up to 5 prior years. Every Texas property owner should audit their record at least once.
10 minute read · ~2,700 words
TaxStand is veteran-founded. If you served, the disabled veteran exemption may be the most valuable single filing of your life — up to 100% property tax exemption for fully-disabled veterans, partial exemptions for any qualifying rating, full benefits for surviving spouses. Read the complete guide here.
Texas property tax protest rules are statewide, but the portal you use, the deadlines, the ARB structure, and the comp data shape vary by county. Drill down to yours.
These are the Texas Comptroller's public forms you'll use during a protest or to claim your homestead exemption. They're hosted directly from comptroller.texas.gov — we keep a mirror here so you don't have to hunt for them. State-published forms are public domain.
Notice of Protest. The form you file with your county appraisal district to start a property tax protest. Deadline: May 15 or 30 days after notice, whichever is later.
Application for Residence Homestead Exemption. File this once when you buy a home (it does not carry over from the prior owner). Restores the 10%/yr assessed-value cap.
Appointment of Agent. Only needed if you're authorizing someone else (family, attorney, agent) to represent you at the hearing. Optional for a DIY protest.
Disabled Veteran's or Survivor's Exemption. If you have a VA disability rating (any percentage), or you are the surviving spouse of a service member killed in action or who died from a service-connected condition, file this. Up to 100% exemption for fully disabled veterans. Full guide here.
We don't represent you at hearings. We don't promise specific savings. We don't auto-renew you onto a subscription. We don't take a percentage of anything you save. We don't ask for your closing documents or your driver's license or anything we don't need.
We give you a packet, you file the packet. The whole point is that you don't need a professional intermediary. The state of Texas built the protest process for you, and the comp data is already public. We just put it on one piece of paper in the order an Appraisal Review Board respects.