Most Texas commercial owners think a property tax protest is an argument about what their building is worth. There is a second, often stronger argument that has nothing to do with market value: whether your property is appraised fairly relative to its neighbors. Texas calls this "equal and uniform," and it is written into the Tax Code at §42.26. If your appraisal sits above the median of comparable properties, the law says your value comes down. Here is how that actually works.
The equal-and-uniform remedy, in plain English
Each year the county appraisal district puts a value on your property, and your tax bill follows that number. Section 42.26(a)(3) of the Texas Tax Code gives you a specific remedy: if your property is "appraised at a value greater than the median appraised value of a reasonable number of comparable properties appropriately adjusted," the appraisal district must reduce your value to that median.
Read that slowly, because every clause does work:
- Median, not average. You line up comparable properties by their appraised value per square foot and take the middle one. The median resists outliers, which is exactly why the statute names it.
- A reasonable number of comparables. Not one cherry-picked neighbor and not the whole county — a defensible set of genuinely similar properties.
- Appropriately adjusted. This is the heart of it. Two storage facilities are rarely identical, so before you compare them you adjust for size, age, and location. We do that adjustment before we ever tell you that you have a case.
The power of §42.26 is that it does not require you to prove what your building would sell for. It only requires you to show that comparable properties are appraised lower. The county's own appraisal roll is the evidence, and the math is the argument.
Why the gap is so often there
Appraisal districts value most commercial property by mass appraisal — models and schedules, not a walk-through of your building. Models drift. We pulled every self-storage facility in Collin County off the public appraisal roll and the district values them anywhere from about $21 to $536 per square foot, with a typical figure around $86/SF before adjustments. Square footage does not explain a spread that wide. It means some owners carry far more of the tax load than the facility down the road, and under §42.26 those owners have a remedy.
A wide range is not proof. Two facilities can differ for real reasons that raw price-per-foot hides. That is why the adjustment step is not optional — we compare you to true peers, not to a number that looks low on a spreadsheet.
The calendar: May 15 is the date that matters
The deadline to file a protest in Texas is generally May 15, or 30 days after the appraisal district mails your notice of appraised value, whichever is later. Miss it and, absent a narrow exception, you wait a full year and pay the higher bill in the meantime. Everything else in the process flows from hitting that date.
- Spring — notices mail. The appraisal district sends your notice of appraised value, usually in April or May.
- By May 15 — file the protest. You file a Notice of Protest (Form 50-132) with the appraisal review board, checking the box for "value is unequal compared with other properties."
- Summer — the ARB hearing. The Appraisal Review Board, a panel independent of the appraisal district, schedules a hearing. You present your adjusted comparables and the median they produce; the district defends its number.
- Decision. If the board agrees your appraisal exceeds the median of your adjusted comparables, it orders the value reduced, and your tax bill follows the lower number.
What a strong equal-and-uniform case looks like
The evidence is not exotic. It is the appraisal district's own roll, read carefully:
- A set of comparable properties — same use, similar build — pulled from the public roll.
- Each one's appraised value per square foot, adjusted for size, age, and location.
- The median of that adjusted set, and your property sitting above it.
When those line up, §42.26 is not a matter of opinion the board can wave off. It is a calculation grounded in the county's own records. The honest caveat: a clean equal-and-uniform case depends on having genuinely comparable properties to adjust against. Where comparables are thin or your property is one of a kind, the argument gets softer, and we will tell you that rather than file a weak protest.
How we fit, and what it costs
We read the county's public appraisal roll, build the comparable set, run the size-age-location adjustments, and compute the median — the analysis that tells you whether you actually have a case. We do not name owners and we do not guess. A model finds the case; a licensed Texas property tax agent reviews it, files the protest, and represents you at the ARB hearing. That human gate is not a formality — under Texas rules a licensed agent is who files and appears for you.
We are a new company, so we lead with the math rather than a win record we have not earned yet. The arrangement is contingency: you pay nothing up front, and our founding-year rate is 10% of your first-year tax savings — owed only if your value actually drops. If we do not win, you owe nothing.
If you want to see the public numbers for yourself, start at the Texas hub or the Collin County page, and read more explainers on the blog. The figures here are derived from public county records and the Texas Tax Code; they describe what the record shows and what the statute requires, and are not a promise of any particular outcome.