The rule, not a date
Texas law sets your deadline to file a written protest as whichever comes later: May 15, or the 30th day after the date the appraisal district delivered your notice of appraised value to you.
May 15 is a floor, not a target. If your notice goes out early — plenty do — your deadline is still May 15 at the earliest. If your notice goes out late, or you're added to the roll after the main mailing, the 30-day count takes over and pushes your actual deadline later in the year. The two halves of the rule exist for different reasons: May 15 gives the system a predictable outer boundary; the 30-day count exists so you always get a real window to respond, no matter when your particular notice shows up.
Why there isn't one deadline for everyone
Every Texas appraisal district sets its own mailing schedule within the law's requirements, and they don't all mail on the same week. A homeowner in one county can have a notice dated three weeks earlier than a homeowner in a neighboring county — or than a neighbor on the next street whose account happened to be processed in a later batch. Because the 30-day count runs from each notice's own delivery date, two people who both technically have "the same deadline rule" can have real deadlines weeks apart.
That's also why any page — this one included — that prints "the 2027 deadline is [date]" is only ever describing the May 15 floor for people whose notice happened to arrive early. It is not your deadline unless your own notice also arrived early. The only way to know your real deadline is to read the date on your own notice and apply the rule above to it.
When districts actually have to send a notice
Part of why notices land on different days for different people is that the law sets different outer deadlines for the district itself, depending on the property. For a single-family home that qualifies for a homestead exemption, the chief appraiser has to deliver the notice by April 1, or as soon after that as practical. For other property, the deadline is May 1, or as soon after that as practical.A notice isn't required every year, either — it's triggered by specific events: your appraised value went up from the year before, it's higher than what you reported, the property wasn't on last year's roll, an exemption you had was reduced or cancelled, the property was reappraised this year, ownership changed, or you asked for one in writing."As soon after that as practical" is doing real work in that sentence — it's not a hard cutoff, which is exactly why two otherwise-similar homeowners can get their notices weeks apart.
One more mechanical detail worth knowing: if your actual deadline — May 15, or your own 30-day date — falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or a legal state or national holiday, the deadline moves automatically to the next regular business day. You don't have to ask for that extension; it applies on its own.
What actually starts the clock
The 30-day count runs from the date the appraisal district delivered your notice — not the day you opened the envelope, not the day you got around to reading it.Set the notice down the day it arrives and count forward from there, or you risk losing real days off a window that's already narrow.
A worked example of the rule
The rule is easier to see applied than described in the abstract. These two scenarios are illustrations of the mechanism only — hypothetical notice dates, not a real deadline for any actual tax year, so don't treat either one as your own deadline.
Scenario one: a notice is delivered in early April. Count 30 days forward and you land in early May — before May 15. Because the rule is whichever date is later, May 15 controls, and that's the deadline, not the earlier 30-day date.
Scenario two: a notice is delivered in late April, closer to mid-month. Counting 30 days forward lands in late May — after May 15. Now the 30-day count controls, and the real deadline sits roughly two weeks past May 15.
Same rule, two different outcomes, because the rule was never a date — it's a comparison you run against your own notice.
How you actually file
The protest itself is filed on the state's Notice of Protest form (Form 50-132) or in an equivalent written notice — with the appraisal district office in the county where the property is taxable. Not with the Texas Comptroller's office, which doesn't handle individual protests at all.Keep a copy of whatever you send and however you send it — if the district ever disputes when your protest arrived, that's your record of when you actually filed it.
If you miss it
Missing the deadline is not automatically the end of your protest for the year. A property owner who files after the deadline, but before the appraisal review board approves the year's appraisal records, is still entitled to a hearing if they can show good cause for the late filing, as determined by the board."Good cause" is decided case by case by the board and is not something asking alone secures — so the safe assumption is still to file on time and treat the good-cause path as a backstop, not a plan.
Two narrower, specific exceptions extend the deadline further: active-duty military members serving outside the United States on the deadline date, and people continuously employed in the Gulf of Mexico for at least 20 days spanning the deadline. Both require supporting documentation — employer or military records — filed alongside the late protest.
After you file
Filing on time doesn't get you an immediate hearing — the appraisal review board schedules hearings later in the season, and there's a separate notice requirement before yours happens. See what actually happens at an ARB hearingfor the step-by-step version, including how much advance notice you're owed and what you can do if the date they pick doesn't work for you.
Working out your own deadline only takes two numbers: the date printed on your notice, and 30. LoneStarLower's estimate tool is built to do that calculation for you automatically, tied to your actual notice date, once it's live for your area — but you don't need the tool to get this right today. The rule above is the whole rule, and it applies the same way whether this is your first notice or your fifteenth: read the date, add 30, compare it to May 15, and take the later of the two.