Property Tax Protest

It is mid-October and the Bexar Appraisal District will soon finish all the Formal hearings for 2022.

Most of the neighbors I talked to that protested their property taxes in 2022, were pretty satisfied with their results at their Informal hearing.

Today, I talked to a friend from an adjacent neighborhood that had his Formal hearing today and he was very frustrated about the way the hearing went. He is a veteran, he used to fly copters and his hearing isn’t what it used to be. He protests his property taxes every year. Every year we compare protest stories.

My Informal protest was last June and his Formal hearing was today. We usually talk before he attends his hearing about his presentation. Every year I tell him he should do his (initial) Informal hearing in person, or at least on a zoom call, but every year he does his original protest online. And every year he ends up going to the (2^nd) Formal hearing. He usually has a very productive protest experience, except this year.

At the Formal hearing, you have 5 people in the room. Yourself, the Appraiser, and (3) other people to observe, listen and render their opinions. My experience has been, outside of introductions, the communication in the Formal hearing is pretty much between me and the Appraiser, pretty much like the Informal hearing.

But today his experience was different. As always, he sent in his personal evidence to the Appraisal District at least (2) business days before his hearing date. That gives the Appraisal District enough time to scan his evidence into their computer.

The Formal Hearing

He walked into the hearing room and saw (3) people sitting across the table, but he was seated behind a plexiglass window. The Appraiser was a no-show, but the Appraiser was on the phone, and one of the (3) people in the room had the Appraiser on the speaker phone.

Imagine that you sign up for an in-person protest and the Appraiser is on a speaker phone. That does not seem fair to me. And listening to the Appraiser on the phone through the plexiglass tends to muffle the Appraiser’s voice.

On several occasions, my friend asked one of the people (she called herself the chairperson) to repeat what the Appraiser was saying on the phone, and the (chairperson) was not happy trying to translate. In fact, my friend said that the chairperson reminded him that this hearing is only supposed to last 15 minutes.

The time limit prior to this year for an Informal hearing was 15 minutes but changed to 30 minutes in 2022. The time limit for a Formal hearing is undefined, in fact, the guideline says “for a reasonable time”. So my friend felt rushed.

Although he was satisfied with the final settlement appraisal, the experience really frustrated him.

I told him, next year don’t do your initial property tax protest “online.”

Schedule an in-person-face-to-face Informal hearing or a “zoom” Informal hearing and there’s a 90% chance you will not need to attend a Formal hearing.

I am writing this because you might find yourself at a Formal hearing in the future listening to an appraiser on the phone, instead of in-person.