Editorial Policy

1. Editorial Mission

Texas property assessment has 254 separately-run Central Appraisal Districts, each with its own portal, exemption forms, ARB calendar, and chief appraiser. We exist to give Texas property owners, buyers, agents, and advisors plain-English access to each CAD’s procedures — without trial-and-error portal navigation, without third-party aggregator markup, and without the confusion that comes from generic national property-records content that doesn’t reflect Texas-specific framework.

2. Source Hierarchy

We work to a six-tier source hierarchy, where higher-tier sources govern when sources conflict:

• Tier 1 — Primary authority: The Texas Central Appraisal District (.gov / official portal). Its own published page is the primary source for that CAD’s procedures, URLs, office details, NOAV calendar, and ARB framework.
• Tier 2: Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts Property Tax Assistance Division (PTAD) — the state agency that supervises Texas CADs under Tex. Tax Code §5. Authoritative for ARB Manual, MAP reviews, biennial PVS.
• Tier 3: Texas Property Tax Code (Title 1, Subtitle E). The statutory framework.
• Tier 4: IAAO professional standards and USPAP administered by the Appraisal Foundation; Appraisal Subcommittee oversight.
• Tier 5: Texas Association of Appraisal Districts (TAAD) and Texas Association of Assessing Officers (TAAO) publications.
• Tier 6: Established real estate and property-tax publications — background context only.

Full detail on each tier is on our Sources & Methodology page.

3. Verification Workflow

1. Identify the right authoritative source. CAD .gov, Texas Comptroller PTAD, Texas Property Tax Code.
2. Verify URLs are live. A human editor clicks every link before publication.
3. Walk through three property-search methods on the live CAD portal — by address, by owner, by property ID.
4. Cross-check exemption procedures and deadlines against CAD forms and PTAD reference.
5. Cross-check ARB protest procedure against CAD protest forms, §41 framework, and PTAD ARB Manual.
6. Verify GIS / parcel-map URL where one exists.
7. Dial-test the CAD’s phone on quarterly cycle.
8. Editor sign-off — second editor reviews end-to-end including FCRA non-CRA notice.

4. Independence

county-appraisal-district.org/ is independent. We are not affiliated with any Texas Central Appraisal District, Texas Comptroller PTAD, TDLR, TAAD, TAAO, TALCB, IAAO, the Appraisal Foundation, NACo, or any commercial property-records aggregator, title company, or real estate platform. No CAD, state agency, or third party reviews our content prior to publication. No payment is accepted for editorial coverage of any specific CAD or any specific procedure.

5. Advertising Relationships

We are funded by display advertising. Our editorial content is never altered to favour any advertiser. We decline advertising in these categories:

• Operations marketed for FCRA-permissible-purpose decisions (tenant screening, employment, credit, insurance) using public-records data
• Operations that misrepresent themselves as Texas CADs, the Texas Comptroller, TDLR, or other state authorities
• Paid-access services for free CAD records
• Unlicensed property tax representation services operating without TDLR licensure under Tex. Occ. Code Ch. 1152
• Foreclosure-list aggregators that misrepresent the official Texas tax-sale process under Tex. Tax Code Ch. 33
• Adult content, gambling, cryptocurrency promotion, payday lending, or other categories incompatible with our editorial position

6. FCRA Editorial Line

7. Corrections

If a guide is wrong, we want to know and we want to fix it. Reader-reported corrections are our priority queue. We process corrections within 7 business days, with a 48-hour expedited path for actively-broken CAD portal URLs. We add a small editorial note when a substantive correction is made.

8. The Texas Legislative Cycle

The Texas Legislature meets in regular session every two years (odd years, January through May, with special sessions called as needed). Substantive changes to the Texas Property Tax Code typically flow from regular sessions. We review our exemption, homestead, ARB, and ag-use content after every regular session and update before the next CAD appraisal cycle. The 2023 increase of the school-district residence homestead exemption to $100,000 is the most recent example of a substantive Code change that propagated through every Texas CAD’s exemption framework.

9. Authors & Contributors

Site content is written and reviewed by editors who have spent time researching, writing about, and (in some cases) personally dealing with Texas CAD procedures. Specialist subject-matter reviewers — including TDLR-licensed property tax consultants and Texas real estate attorneys — are consulted for substantive editorial questions, particularly after Texas legislative sessions. We do not publish ghost-written content from third parties without editorial review.

10. AI & Automation

We use software tools for spell-check, grammar review, and routine drafting assistance. However, no editorial fact, URL, exemption deadline, ARB procedure, address, phone number, or walkthrough step on county-appraisal-district.org/ is published from AI without human verification against the CAD's own published page. Every CAD guide passes through human editorial review. We do not auto-generate or auto-publish CAD guides.

11. Contact

For corrections, editorial questions, or sourcing inquiries: info@county-appraisal-district.org