Austin Property Tax Calculator (2026)

AISD’s rate held mostly flat for 2025; Travis County’s rate ticked up slightly. The story in Austin is appraised value, not rate — homeowners who bought before 2020 have benefited enormously from the 10% homestead appraisal cap while the market rose 60%+ over five years. New buyers absorb the full delta on their first reappraisal.

The combined rate above assumes you’re inside Austin city limits and in the listed ISD. Cross any of those boundary lines and the math changes.

These numbers use the typical combined rate and apply the $100,000 school-district homestead exemption against the full taxable value for simplicity. Your actual bill may differ by 3–8% depending on your exact taxing units and any additional local exemptions you qualify for.

Priya closed on a $720,000 modern in Mueller in late 2025. Her 2026 bill, with homestead filed, will run about $12,700: $5,750 to AISD (after the $100k school exemption), $3,250 to the City of Austin (after the 20% local homestead), $2,200 to Travis County, $725 to Central Health, $635 to ACC. Year-2 taxable value can only grow 10%, capped by homestead.

Drop in your home’s value. The estimator uses Austin’s typical combined rate but you can tune it for your exact ISD/MUD. The $100,000 homestead exemption can be toggled.

Rates vary across Travis County based on which ISD, city, and special district your address falls inside. Suburbs often run lower than the central city, primarily because their school district rates are lower.

City of Austin offers a 20% optional homestead exemption on top of the state $100k. Travis County also offers a 20% exemption. Stacked, these save a typical Austin homeowner $1,800–$2,500 per year — but you have to file with TCAD. Window opens January 1.

Travis Central Appraisal District reappraises residential property every year — every property, every January 1, no exceptions for stability. That's aggressive compared to many Texas counties that run two- or three-year cycles for low-volume areas, and it's the reason Austin homeowners feel reappraisal pressure more than Texans elsewhere.

Notices mail mid-April. Protest deadline: May 15 or 30 days after notice. TCAD's online portal at traviscad.org handles a high share of protests — over 75% in 2024. The informal hearing is by phone or in-person at TCAD's North Lamar offices. Formal ARB hearings run year-round, with most clearing by August.

Austin protests that succeed lean heavily on closed comps within the same school attendance zone (TCAD weights school zone more than zip code), photos showing condition deficiencies (older HVAC, foundation issues, dated finishes), and recent comparable sales in the same neighborhood within the prior 12 months. Vague "the market dropped" arguments without specifics get rejected.

Austin has a particularly active property tax protest consultant market — Five Stone Tax, Ownwell, Property Tax Protest, and Resolute all maintain large Travis County operations. Standard contingency is 30-40% of year-one savings, no upfront cost. If your appraised value increased 10% or more in a single year, hiring a consultant typically clears the math; if it moved less, DIY is usually fine.

Austin Independent School District is one of the largest "property-wealthy" school districts in Texas under the state's school finance formula. Under recapture — the policy Texans call "Robin Hood" — AISD sends roughly $700-$900 million per year of its locally raised property tax revenue to the state for redistribution to property-poor districts elsewhere in Texas.

The result: AISD's rate of $0.9252 per $100 (2025) funds Austin schools and a substantial transfer payment. The district can't materially lower its rate without losing operational funding because the recapture obligation is fixed by formula, not by what AISD chooses to spend locally. Cuts to AISD's rate trigger automatic compression elsewhere, but the recapture floor holds.

This is why Austin property tax feels heavy despite Travis County and the City of Austin running comparatively modest rates: the school district line is doing structural work for the entire state. The 2023 legislature's SB 2 compression mechanism gradually softens this, but recapture stays.

For homeowners, the takeaway is practical: AISD's rate is unlikely to drop much over the next few years regardless of who is on the board. Plan your housing math accordingly. The bigger lever is your homestead status and the 10% cap — those you control.

Austin's 2020-2022 appreciation cycle was historic — median home value rose 50%+ in roughly 30 months. The 10% homestead cap means a homesteaded property's taxable value could rise only 10% per year, compounding. Three consecutive 10% years compound to ~33%, against a market that rose ~50%. The gap continues every year.

Worked example: a Mueller home worth $480,000 in January 2020 hit roughly $750,000 market value by January 2024. The homesteaded taxable value, capped at 10%/yr, rose from $480,000 to ~$643,000 over four years. That's a $107,000 gap — multiplied by Austin's ~2.05% combined rate, the cap saved that homeowner roughly $2,200 per year by 2024, growing each year the gap widens.

This is why the homestead exemption matters more than its $100,000 line-item suggests. The cap is the bigger feature. Long-tenured Austin homeowners are paying property tax bills 30-50% lower than recent buyers on identical-list-price homes — purely because of cap aging.

The cap resets to market value on resale. If you bought before 2020 and stayed, the cap is doing serious work for you. If you bought in 2023+, you absorbed the appreciation in your starting basis and the cap will help you going forward. Either way, file homestead immediately. Every year you delay is a year of missed cap protection.

Scenario 1 — Mueller buyer, 2025 close, $720k home. Year one with homestead filed: about $12,700 in total tax. Breakdown: $5,750 to AISD, $3,250 to City of Austin (after 20% local), $2,200 to Travis County, $725 to Central Health, $635 to ACC. Year-2 cap means taxable value can grow no more than 10% even if market jumps further.

Scenario 2 — East Austin owner, 2017 close, $315k purchase, $695k current market value, ~$465k capped taxable. With homestead in place: about $9,500 annual tax. The cap saved $4,700/year by 2025 compared to paying on full market. Eight years of stayed homestead = roughly $25,000 cumulative tax saved by the cap alone.

Scenario 3 — Westlake owner, $1.5M market, $1.5M assessed (no cap aging — recently bought). Just outside Austin city limits in Eanes ISD: tax bill about $24,000/year. Eanes's rate ($1.07/$100) is lower than AISD's, but the higher home value pushes total tax up. Eanes is a "property wealthy" district that also pays recapture, so its rate has a floor.

At 65, your AISD taxes freeze at the level of the year you turned 65 — a true ceiling, not just a rate cap. Even if Austin's home values jump or AISD raises its rate, your school tax bill stays put. The freeze applies to the homestead property and continues forever as long as you live there.

Practical example: a homeowner who turned 65 in 2021 with a $560,000 taxable value would have AISD taxes locked at roughly $5,150 (the 2021 AISD rate applied to 2021 taxable value). In 2025, even though the same home's market value is $740,000 and the cap-adjusted taxable value would be ~$735,000, the AISD line on the bill is still ~$5,150.

The City of Austin and Travis County also offer their own senior freezes on their portions, though the rules differ from the school freeze. Together, the senior tax stack can cap a long-tenured Austin homeowner's total tax bill at the year-65 level — often producing real savings of $1,500-$3,000/year by age 75.

The freeze transfers to a surviving spouse 55 or older. If you sell and rebuy in Texas, you can transfer the school freeze's percentage benefit (your effective tax rate) to a new homestead — file the necessary paperwork with both old and new appraisal districts.