Couple of questions on property taxes: 1) My wife and I purchased our first home in June. We recently received our first property tax bill for 2009 taxes and it includes a couple of local option homestead exemptions (we haven't yet received the local ISD tax bill to see if it has the $15K homestead exemption). However, I was under the impression we would receive no exemptions this year as we did not own the house on Jan 1, 2009. Is this an error? 2) Also, we live in Williamson County with an Austin address. Do we owe any city taxes, and if so, who is the tax assessor-collector I should contact to receive a bill? It appears all 2009 tax bills on our property were sent to the previous owner's lender (I'm assuming the previous owner escrowed their taxes)...so now I'm trying to piece together all of the taxing entities to which we owe property taxes so that I can pay them prior to 12/31 and receive the tax deduction on my federal income tax return next year. Why am I having such a difficult time giving the government money?
If the previous homeowner had a homestead exemption for 2009, you should receive that as well in 2009. You will need to re-file your homestead exemption in 2010 under your name. Or at least that is how it works in Harris County.
I believe you will get only 1 property tax bill that you pay to your county tax assessor. The tax bill will include school and other taxing districts and the county tax assessor pays them with your money
