News & Interest
Revisions to Property Tax Code per SB 1505 (Section 23.175)
Property Tax Code Section 23.175 (Oil and Gas
Interest) has been amended by the Texas Legislature (82nd Regular Session in
2011) via
SB 1505,
effective beginning tax year 2012.
This new law specifically states that the chief appraiser, instead of the
comptroller, will be making the calculations for "price adjustment factor"
(terminology replacing "market condition factor" in the current law) per
EIA data to be used for deriving year-1 price. The law also gives
instructions as to the maximum escalation percentage to be used for years 2-6
(one for oil, one for natural gas) per BLS data.
We've had some
chief appraisers reading this new law literally and then asking us
if Pritchard & Abbott, Inc., can make these calculations for
them. Rest assured, we will in fact be making all these oil and gas
price calculations on behalf of the chief appraiser in the normal course of
fulfilling our contractual duties to appraise oil and gas mineral
interests.
The data
sources and methodology for these new price calculations have been
well-described and are quite exact. The process will be seamless for our
mineral appraisers as the appropriate factors will be hard-coded into our
appraisal program as before. And
as before, we're still starting with last year's average monthly price specific
to each property we appraise.
As always, we
welcome any thoughts or suggestions you have regarding our appraisal work, etc.
We are here to serve the taxpayers in the most efficient, timely and
fair manner possible.