(Seguin) — Guadalupe Appraisal District Chief Appraiser Peter Snaddon is shedding more light on why local taxing entities are seeing a significant drop in taxable value this year, saying “the situation is the result of several factors coming together rather than one mistake or one year of lost value.”
In fact, Snaddon describes it as a “perfect storm” involving state-mandated tax changes, a slower property market and changes to tax freezes for homeowners who are 65 and older or disabled.
One of the major changes began with a constitutional amendment approved by Texas voters in November 2023. He says the measure increased the homestead exemption from $40,000 to $100,000 and increased exemptions for homeowners who are 65 and older or disabled.
These changes, however, were complicated even more he says by “the requirement to apply them retroactively.”
“The state, the legislature, in 2023, sent to the voters in November of 2023 the opportunity to increase the homestead exemption amount to $100,000 from $40,000, as well as the over-65. They increased that as well for individuals. What was really specific about that aspect was they had the tax assessor-collectors go back as far as 2019, so that way they could use the compression rates to give them the benefit that the legislature wanted them to have,” said Snaddon.
This, he says created challenges because “the appraisal district and tax assessor-collector’s offices have different responsibilities — and different computer systems.”
“Our position here at this office has never changed. We’ve never assessed, and freeze ceiling calculations are an assessment function. The issue that we were having was the communication between our two systems,”said Snaddon.
Snaddon says his office began including warnings with its reports in 2024, advising taxing entities to verify freeze information with their tax assessor-collector before using the figures for budgeting.
He says his office could provide the information available in its system, but could not certify the tax-ceiling figures maintained by the tax assessor-collector.
The appraisal district later ran a “freeze/refreeze” process going back to 2023 as a quality-control measure. When preliminary 2026 appraisal totals were sent to taxing entities in April, Snaddon says some of the changes that had been developing over several years appeared all at once.
He says this created what he describes as “sticker shock.”
“I wish it would have been correct, obviously, in ’23, so that way you would have started as a gradual rather than what everybody’s appealing just, everybody feels like was just an oversight in our office. It wasn’t an oversight,” said Snaddon.
Snaddon points to documentation and emails dating back to 2022 and 2023 showing the offices had been working through the issue.
Meanwhile, “the freeze changes were only part of the decline in taxable value.”
Snaddon says Guadalupe County lost approximately $752 million in taxable value, or nearly 12
percent — because of state-mandated exemptions and other changes.
He says 208 additional homes qualified for the 100 percent disabled-veteran exemption, representing about $212 million in lost taxable value. Another “roughly $210 million in taxable value was lost through changes under House Bill 9 involving business personal property.”
Those losses he says came as the local property market was also slowing.
“It wasn’t just the freeze. The freeze had an impact because the freeze is obviously — the main issue, I think — it impacts their tax rate calculations. But it wasn’t just the freeze. They were also being hit with obviously a slow market as well as the new House Bill 9 loss, things of that nature,” said Snaddon. “It all came at once when really it was occurring over the last three years. 2023 would have been the biggest, but then consequently each year after that, because the tax roll changes, we have new people that qualify for the over-65 and disabled persons and things of that nature.”
He says the appraisal district and tax assessor-collector’s office are already moving with plans to streamline the process.
“Everybody should be QC’ing figures that come through when they’re doing their budgets. I hope that’s what comes out of this at the most — that you just can’t rely on the numbers there in my report.”
Snaddon says the “two offices have different statutory responsibilities, but are working together to improve communication and accuracy.”