Travis County Tax Update

Recently, the Travis County Tax Assessor made an unprecedented change to their billing system, which impacts every real estate sale transaction in Travis County. They will no longer update their ownership records throughout the year and will instead only pull in the new information on January 1st.

For example, if you purchase a property in June 2022, the Travis County Tax Assessor would not update their billing information until January 1, 2023. Property tax bills for 2022 will be sent to the person that owned the property on January 1st when those bills go out in the fall.

As always, the title company will collect prorated taxes from the sellers at closing, with a credit to the buyer against the full amount of taxes due at the end of the year. If the tax rolls have been certified at the time of closing (usually in October or later), taxes will be paid at closing.

Unless the Travis County Tax Assessor reconsiders this change, you will need to follow these best practices:
Sellers – Be aware you may get the property tax bill for a property you sold earlier in the year.
Buyers – If you purchase a property with cash or do not escrow funds for taxes with a mortgage company, you will need to contact the Tax Assessor before the end of the year to get your bill contact information below.

Mortgage companies who collect escrows will likely obtain the bill and pay taxes on the buyer’s behalf.

Travis County Tax Office
Phone: (512) 854-9473 (Monday – Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.)
Web: Tax-Office.TravisCountyTX-gov
Email: [email protected]

To our knowledge, Travis County is the only county Tax Assessor’s office that has implemented this change.