Changes to the tax code caused property tax bills to come out late this year, and in the process, some bills were initially incorrect. Now the Hays County Tax Assessors’ Office is working on issuing refunds to those who paid too much.
The issue began with Proposition 4 on the Texas Constitutional Amendments in November, which led to changes in the way that rates and exemptions are administered. It increased the Homestead Exemption from $40,000 to $100,000, but also had other impacts on various other exemptions and tax calculations.
Some in the public raised concerns regarding the inaccuracy of the initial property tax statements that were posted online before the paper statements were available. The amounts posted originally were higher than the final amount.
“We did have some inaccurate totals on a portion of the bills that showed up online,” Hays County Tax Assessor-Collector Jenifer O’Kane said. “This did not affect the actual paper statements that were emailed to property owners.” She added that the error was caught and remedied prior to creating the paper statements. “This was my vendor’s error. I caught it immediately and they moved quickly [the next day] to fix it but didn’t complete the process. Another error on their part. I caught this a few days later. We do have a large number of refunds payable because the correction to the amount reduced the total bill.”
O’Kane said the vendor used was Tyler Technologies and the problem is that someone forgot to add in one of the two changes from state law that impacted the way property taxes are calculated in Hays County.
“The second change to tax ceilings to address SB2 is what was not initially run for Hays County accounts,” O’Kane said, talking about the state laws that impacted Prop 4. “There are calculations that the appraisal district had to do on their side, and some of the appraisal districts did them at different points in the process. We had to find out how each different appraisal district handled the Senate Bill processes. Apparently, there was a misunderstanding how Hays CAD handled it. So, the vendor did not run the Senate Bill 2 calculation, which was the second lowering of the bill.”
Tyler Technologies responded to a request for comment stating, ‘Once we learned there was an adjustment that needed to be made, we worked with the Tax Assessor’s office to quickly update the information.’
Senate Bill 2 is related to providing property tax relief through the public school finance system, exemptions, limitations on appraisals and taxes and property tax administration.
“S.B. 2 revises the formula for calculating the ceiling on the school district taxes that may be imposed on the residence homestead of an elderly or disabled,” according to the state legislature’s bill analysis.
O’Kane stressed that, in the mixup in Hays County, the only people impacted would be the property owners that have tax ceilings, which means they are over 65 years old or disabled, and paid the statement as soon as it came out online prior to the correction being made.
“We are trying to get them (the refunds) out by the end of Feb.,” O’Kane said.
The error was caught before the county moved funds from escrow accounts, and this issue is unrelated to escrow payments, according to O’Kane.
“Property owners may choose to pre-pay a portion or all (based on an estimate) of their property taxes to our office at any point in the year,” O’Kane said. “Upon generating the bills for a given year, we then move those funds over to the bill and either send a receipt with a balance due or a letter to the property owner asking them if they want the refund returned to them or for us to keep the funds for the next tax year.”
Property tax statements can be viewed online at tax.co.hays.tx.us. County Officials said refunds will be issued in the order that the payments were received. The property tax statements will become delinquent on Feb. 1, if not paid, according to O’Kane.
