BILL ANALYSIS

H.B. 242

By: Otto

Ways & Means

Committee Report (Unamended)

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

Current law requires certain property tax notices to be sent to property owners by certified mail to ensure that the owners timely receive information relevant to protests before the appraisal review board and related remedies. Interested parties note that if certain notices are not received in a timely fashion, property owners can suffer adverse financial impacts. For example, the owner of agricultural land owes a rollback tax if the land is determined by a chief appraiser to have been converted to a nonagricultural use and that determination is not contested to the appraisal review board within a certain amount of time. This makes the chief appraiser's duty to deliver a notice of such a determination extremely time sensitive. H.B. 242 seeks to prevent this type of adverse financial impact by adding certain property tax notices to those that must be delivered by certified mail.

RULEMAKING AUTHORITY

It is the committee's opinion that this bill does not expressly grant any additional rulemaking authority to a state officer, department, agency, or institution.

ANALYSIS

H.B. 242 amends the Tax Code to add the following notices to the property tax notices that must be sent to a property owner by certified mail: notice by a chief appraiser of a determination that land previously designated for agricultural use has been diverted to a nonagricultural use, notice by a chief appraiser that a new application for an appraisal of property as agricultural land is required to confirm the land's current eligibility if the appraiser has reason to believe the land's eligibility has ended, notice of the imposition of a penalty for a late application for an appraisal of property as agricultural land and an explanation of the reason for the penalty, and notice by a chief appraiser of a determination that a change occurred in the use of land that has been appraised either as agricultural land or timber land and of the owner's right to protest the determination.

EFFECTIVE DATE

January 1, 2014.