If you get a letter from your appraisal district asking you to verify your homestead exemption, don’t ignore it. Those who don’t respond could end up losing their exemption and paying more in taxes. Here’s what you need to do.

The Brief

• Texas has a new homestead exemption audit requirement for homeowners.
• The 2023 law is meant to make sure you are still the homeowner for the property that’s getting a tax break.
• If you get a verification notice from your appraisal district and don’t respond, you could end up paying more in taxes.

If you don’t respond to the verification notice, you could lose your homestead tax exemption and pay more in taxes.

What is a homestead exemption?

Homeowners in Texas get a break with what’s called the homestead exemption. It allows your taxes to be calculated at a rate lower than your appraised or market value.

Until recently, it was ‘set it and forget it’ for most.

However, state legislators passed a law in 2023 that requires the appraisal district in Texas counties to determine if you are still eligible for that exemption at least once every five years.

Why you should care:

“We’re going to send out a reapply letter the last week of December asking you to reapply within 30 days,” said Shane Docherty, Dallas County’s chief appraiser. “If you don’t, then we’re going to remove it before we mail the notices on April 15 of that year.”

If that happens, then you will be taxed at the full appraised or market value of your home, meaning you will pay more.

“This year, we got our tax bill, and we went from like a $6,000 or $7000 bill when we first moved in here to over $12,000. The first thing I looked on the statement, and the exemptions was blank,” he recalled. “Trying to do some research. It disappeared somehow. And the county said, ‘You have to reapply. Of course, you have to pay the bill as is. And then it could take three to four months to get approved for your homestead exemption.’”

How to check the status of your homestead exemption

What you can do: Homeowners can check on the status of their homestead exemption by going to their county’s appraisal district website.

For a list of all county appraisal district websites, visit https://comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/property-tax/county-directory/.

A quick property search should reveal which exemptions are valid.

I lost my homestead exemption. Now what?

Docherty and Dallas County Deputy Chief Appraiser Cheryl Jordan explained the process of getting that exemption back once it’s dropped.

“It’s a two-page document. It’s not that difficult to complete,” she said. “It’s some boxes to check. You sign your name and put some information down. You can probably have it done in about five minutes.”

You must verify that it’s your primary residence, and the address on your state-issued driver’s license or ID must match the physical address of your property.

“If you have paid your taxes, and we don’t have a homestead, and you file a homestead in a subsequent month, and we process it, we will notify the tax office,” Docherty said. “We do that once a month every month, and then they will send you out a refund.”

Bottom Line:

Don’t ignore any kind of mail you get from the appraisal district. Read it carefully.

And if you think you already have a homestead exemption, follow their instructions or give them a call. You can save yourself from having your taxes calculated at a higher rate.

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PRUNING FRUIT TREES

Fruit trees are pruned to train trees for production of greatest yield and highest quality fruit. Among the fruit trees requiring pruning are peaches, apricots, apples, pears and quince. Of these, pears and quince require the least pruning, while peaches require the most.

Pruning is not training. Training fruit trees to a strong framework is done by establishing scaffold branches, the primary limbs radiating from the trunk of a tree. Today we’re discussing two very different training systems, that of peach and pear.

The first is the “open vase” or “open center” approach that is recommended for peaches, as the center is open, allowing the sun to penetrate the interior of the tree. This system involves techniques that develop two to four — preferably three — scaffold branches that arise near each other on the trunk, about equal in size.

Branches with narrow crotches have forks that often split when bearing a heavy fruit load; therefore, leave scaffolds that have wide angles of 60 to 90 degrees spaced equally around the trunk, arising at as low as 24 inches from the ground. Small and secondary limbs with growth directed to the inside of the canopy should be removed from the center, thus creating an open vase.

Four Steps to Prune a Mature Peach Tree:

1. Remove all hanger shoots, rootstock suckers, and water sprouts in the lower three feet of the tree. This removal of lower growth clears a path for herbicide applications and allows for air circulation.

2. Remove all shoots above seven feet in height other than red 18 – 24-inch fruiting shoots. Cuts need to be at selected points where the scaffold and sub-scaffold limbs extend up-ward at a 45 – 50-degree angle. Cuts which leave limbs sideways at a 90-degree angle should be avoided.

3. Remove all water sprouts (excessively vigor-ous growth) which grow toward the inside of the tree.

4. Remove all old gray wood in the three to seven-foot production zone.

Late-spring frost is the single greatest factor in Texas peach production and pruning early in the year removes much of the flower bud crop that constitutes “insurance” against crop loss. The peach tree will bloom soon after pruning when chilling is satisfied, and warm weather follows. Growers with only a few trees can wait until “pink bud” to prune while larger growers traditionally prune as late in the spring as they can while still allowing for enough time to complete the task. Mature peach trees often take 20 to 30 minutes to prune properly.

The second training system is for pears, which require very light pruning. Even light pruning may induce water sprouts and fast-growing terminal growth. Such growth will be vegetative and will not bear fruit but more critically, is susceptible to fire blight infection. For pears, restrict pruning cuts to branches that rub each other and to water sprouts as they appear.

To train pear trees, spread scaffolds of young trees by bending upright-growing branches to a wide angle and holding them there with properly cut lengths of wood, such as dowels or wood pieces used as spreader-sticks. In each end of the spreader-stick, drive a small nail in to half its length. Cut the head of the nail off at an angle, leaving a sharp point. The pointed nail in each end is used to hold the spreader in place. After several seasons, the limbs will no longer need the spreader-sticks to maintain a wide angle. Spreading branches is an essential practice with most pear, sweet cherry and apple trees.