Property tax bills are arriving across Texas this month, and many homeowners who qualify for the state's biggest tax break have never asked for it, according to reporting published Tuesday by The Texas Tribune.
Appraisal districts and policy researchers told the Tribune that hundreds of thousands of potentially eligible homeowners lack a homestead exemption. Estimates included about 113,000 households in Harris County, roughly 60,000 each in Travis and Bexar counties and 57,000 in Dallas County, where the Child Poverty Action Lab calculated those owners have left close to $310 million unclaimed.
The districts cautioned that their figures show who might qualify, not who definitely does.
What the exemption does
School districts must exempt $140,000 of a qualifying home's value from taxation. Owners who are 65 or older or who have a qualifying disability get another $60,000 off, and their school tax bill is frozen once they turn 65. An approved homestead also picks up any exemptions offered by cities and counties and falls under the state's 10% annual cap on taxable value increases.
A study cited by the Tribune estimated that a Dallas County homeowner with a median-priced house would have paid $7,062 last year without the exemption and $4,573 with it.
The comptroller's office counted about 6.28 million Texas homeowners with an exemption in 2025. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican state senator from Houston, told the Tribune that figure grew by 580,000 over two years. Advocates said barriers remain, including confusing forms, language gaps, expired IDs among older owners and heirs whose names are not on a deed.
