Aransas County Property Taxes
How to deal with the necessary evil of property taxes in Rockport, Texas: A how to research property taxes guide.

In today’s day and age information is the key resource in any business transaction. Make no mistake about it, buying a home, Condo or other real estate is in fact the most important business deal many people will ever face. There is good news however: never before in history has the average citizen had the power of the internet search engines to enable them to acquire piles of information on the wanted property, its developer, location and value. This article will deal with property taxes.

As many of you already know Texas has no income taxes and the state’s primary source of income is sales and property taxes, I will attempt in layman’s terms to show you how to find out the exact total tax rate for a specific property you are interested in.

Generally Texas tax rates are expressed in dollar amounts per thousand dollars of appraised value. For example if I told you your total tax rate for your property is $1.50 that would be a dollar fifty for each thousand dollars of appraised value. If your property appraised for $100,000 your property taxes would be ($1.50) X ($100,000) =$1500 per year then divide by 12 months in a year would equal $125.00 a month. 

Heck that’s simple you might say and it is. However, in Texas there are many taxing units that make it difficult to determine the exact dollar amount of the tax rate on a specific piece of property. These units consist of cities, counties, special taxing units (fire, ambulance, police, and community colleges) and school districts. So the location of a piece of property within these districts determines the tax rate for that particular piece of property.

Ok with that behind us let's by example look up a specific piece of property in Aransas County, Texas. You may not realize it but the amount paid by citizens as property tax is a matter of public record and available on the internet. Yes you can look up Uncle Bills house or that loudmouth down at the factory’s house and see what it appraises for and how much the taxes are and whether Uncle Bill has paid his taxes. Nosey bunches aren’t we? Let’s get started.

If you click on this link Aransas County Tax Office you will see a page like this:

Now looking at the page to the left you may notice that you need the owner’s name to search for a property, you may also click on the down arrow and search by the property’s address or property ID.   You can get that information from the realtor or if the realtor doesn’t want to give you the owners name at least you can get the address.   So whose house /property are we going to look up? Might as well be some politician I suppose so let me suggest the Mayor of Rockport, Texas, the Hon. Todd Peterson. So click on the tax link here Aransas County Tax Office and under search by owners name, type in Peterson under Last Name and Todd under First Name. Now hit the search button.

Once you hit the search button you will see a page listing all the properties attached to that name. Select the property you are interested in viewing by clicking on the Property ID number.

Now in order to arrive at how much the Mayor’s Taxes are, the tax assessor had to multiply each taxing entity’s rate time the assessed value of the mayor’s home.  So to get to the rate we will have to divide.  Stay with me there junior we are almost done.   I add up all the taxes assessed and get a total amount of $9194 as the total taxes on the Assessed $567,210.00. Dividing 9194 by 567210 we arrive at .0162 or a tax rate of 1.62 per hundred. (Tax Rate = 9194/567210) The mayor is paying 1.62 tax dollars for each hundred dollars or 1.62% quite low for Texas so our mayor is doing a fine job. So we have learned how to find the tax rate for any property in Aransas County by using the owners name or the address. The taxes on our 100,000 property without exemptions would be $1620.00 if it was located next the Mayor’s property.

Cameron County Appraisal District

Very interesting. At some point in my future I do plan to move back to Texas and sometimes the realtors don't tell the whole story. Thanks