Dallas County, Texas property tax
What owner-occupants in Dallas County (population 2,656,028) report paying, measured by the Census Bureau, and the Texas law that decides how a bill is built.
Provisional This is a measured outcome, not a rate anyone is billed. Property tax here is levied by overlapping county, city, school and special districts, so two homes in Dallas County with the same value can owe different amounts. A levied county rate has not been collected yet.
What homeowners report paying
- Surveyed effective rate
- 1.58%
- ±0.02% at 90% confidence (1.56% to 1.61%).
- Median annual tax bill
- $4,798
- ±$49 at 90% confidence ($4,749 to $4,847).
- Median home value
- $303,000
- ±$2,811 at 90% confidence ($300,189 to $305,811).
Coefficient of variation 0.01: a tight estimate by Census standards.
Among the 250 Texas counties with a point estimate, Dallas County ranks 31 from the highest. The middle Texas county sits at 1.18%. Neighbouring ranks are often inside each other’s margin of error, so read a rank as a neighbourhood, not a position.
How this is measured
ACS 5-year median real estate taxes paid (table B25103) divided by ACS 5-year median value of owner-occupied housing units (table B25077), county-wide. This is a ratio of two independently estimated medians — not the median of the ratio, and not a rate any parcel is billed. It reflects the actual mix of overlapping districts, exemptions and assessment caps as experienced by owner-occupants, and it lags: a 5-year sample centres about two and a half years before its end date.
Layer 1 of the county property-tax corpus: a MEASURED baseline from ACS 2020-2024 5-year, not a published rate. No statutory rate, assessment ratio or exemption has been collected for these counties yet, so nothing here should be read as what a particular property would be billed.
How Texas builds a property tax bill
- Value taxed
- Current market value
- Reassessment
- Every year
- Who assesses
- The county assessor
- Lien date
- January 1 · Tax year 2025 (calendar), bills due 31 January 2026
- Assessment of owner-occupied homes
- Full value (100%)
- Assessment of commercial property
- Full value (100%)
- County government levies
- Yes
- Business personal property
- Taxed, first $2,500 exempt
Commercial versus residential
- Commercial and residential property are taxed alike.
Limits
- Assessed value may grow at most 10.0% a year (owner-occupied homes), resetting on sale.
- Assessed value may grow at most 20.0% a year (other residential, commercial, industrial), resetting on sale.
- A jurisdiction's total levy may grow at most 3.5% a year, new construction excluded.
Exemptions and relief
| Program | Amount | Reaches |
|---|---|---|
| School district residence homestead exemption (§11.13(b)) | $140,000 | school levies only · statewide |
| Additional school exemption, 65 or older or disabled (§11.13(c)) | $60,000 | school levies only · statewide |
| School tax ceiling for 65+ and disabled homesteads (§11.26) | Value or tax frozen | school levies only · statewide |
| De minimis exemption for income-producing personal property (§11.145) | $2,500 | all levies · statewide |
| Local-option percentage homestead exemption (§11.13(n)) | 20% of value | all levies · local option |
Notes on Texas law
Three corrections worth carrying forward, because each is widely misreported. (1) The business personal property de minimis exemption is $2,500 for tax year 2025 and operates as a threshold; the $125,000 subtraction begins in tax year 2026. (2) School districts have NO 2.5% voter-approval rate — §26.08(n) sets theirs from the maximum compressed rate plus the greater of last year's enrichment rate or five cents, plus debt. The 2.5% figure is a separate instrument, a compression trigger in Education Code §48.2551 that holds tier-one revenue growth rather than capping a rate. For TY2025 the state maximum compressed rate is $0.6322 per $100, the §48.2552 local floor is $0.5689, and §45.003(d) caps any district's total maintenance-and-operations rate at $0.8022. (3) Commercial property is NOT excluded from every cap: §23.231 gives non-homestead real property a 20% appraisal cap through tax year 2026. Two traps in the §5.091 spreadsheets, which are otherwise the best statewide file in the country. A rate of ZERO is ambiguous between "levies no tax" and "did not report" — 347 of 4,862 units show zero, and the ONLY discriminator is a trailing asterisk in the taxing-unit name, which must be parsed. And the files carry no FIPS or GEOID at all; COUNTY ID is the Comptroller's own alphabetical 001-254 code, so Dallas is 057 rather than 113, and a name-to-GEOID crosswalk is required. The schema also breaks between 2023 and 2024, and the files are revised in place — every 2025 row currently reads version "Working" dated 28 January 2026, with an August refresh due at the same URLs, so any ingest must record its own fetch date.
Texas law record: tax year 2025, official, verified 2026-08-03.
Sources & Trust
Each source is rated by what published it. The Census is authoritative about what households reported and silent about any rate, which is why it sits at tier 2.
The measurement
- Tier 2 · Official, not operativewww2.census.govACS 2020-2024 5-year, table B25103 — Mortgage Status by Median Real Estate Taxes Paid
Checked 2026-08-03
- Tier 2 · Official, not operativewww2.census.govACS 2020-2024 5-year, table B25077 — Median Value of Owner-Occupied Housing Units
Checked 2026-08-03
Texas law
- Tier 1 · Primary authoritystatutes.capitol.texas.govTexas Tax Code Chapter 23 — Appraisal Methods and Procedures
Checked 2026-08-03
- Tier 1 · Primary authoritystatutes.capitol.texas.govTexas Tax Code Chapter 11 — Taxable Property and Exemptions
Checked 2026-08-03
- Tier 1 · Primary authoritystatutes.capitol.texas.govTexas Tax Code Chapter 26 — Assessment
Checked 2026-08-03
- Tier 1 · Primary authoritystatutes.capitol.texas.govTexas Constitution, Article VIII — Taxation and Revenue
Checked 2026-08-03
- Tier 1 · Primary authoritycomptroller.texas.govTexas Comptroller — Tax Rates and Levies (Tex. Tax Code §5.091)
Checked 2026-08-03