How do you compare property tax rates between two addresses in Texas?

Through two different public records, and most people only know one. Your county's website carries five years of adopted rates for every taxing unit in the county. Your appraisal district runs a separate database that Texas law requires to be searchable by property address, and that is the one that shows which units actually tax a specific house.

Those two records exist because two different sections of the Texas Tax Code require them, they are maintained by two different offices, and they answer two different questions. Knowing which one to open is most of the skill. What follows is what each one is required to contain, in the statute's own words, and where to find them for the Dallas-Fort Worth counties.

Why can't you just look up one rate for a city?

Because no single unit taxes your house. The State of Texas puts it plainly on its own property tax transparency page: "Multiple taxing units like your school district, county, and city tax each property. Most taxpayers will get only one bill from the local assessor-collector that combines the taxes owed to each taxing unit."

One bill, several rate-setters. A house inside Dallas city limits may be taxed by the city, the county, a school district, a community college district and a hospital district. A house a mile away in the same city can sit in a different school district entirely, or inside a municipal utility district that the first house is not in.

So "the tax rate in Frisco" is not a number. It is a question about an address.

What does the county website show you?

Tax Code Section 26.16 is the county record. It opens: "Each county shall maintain an Internet website. The county assessor-collector for each county shall post on the Internet website maintained by the county the following information for the most recent five tax years for each taxing unit all or part of the territory of which is located in the county."

Six rates are listed, as printed in the statute:

1. "the adopted tax rate"
2. "the maintenance and operations rate"
3. "the debt rate"
4. "the no-new-revenue tax rate"
5. "the no-new-revenue maintenance and operations rate"
6. "the voter-approval tax rate"

The statute also dictates the presentation: the information "must be presented in the form of a table under the heading 'Truth in Taxation Summary.'" If you are on the right page, you will see that exact heading. Dallas County's tax office page prints it, along with the subheading "Texas Property Tax Code Section 26.16" and columns matching the six rates above, for tax years 2026 back to 2022.

Section 26.16 also requires two things people rarely look for: the rate calculation worksheets each taxing unit used, going back to the 2020 tax year, and "the name and official contact information for each member of the governing body of the taxing unit." If you want to know who voted for a rate, that is where it lives.

What this record is not is a per-property lookup. It is organised by taxing unit. Nothing in Section 26.16 requires an address search.

What does the appraisal district database show you?

Tax Code Section 26.17 is the other record, and it is the address-level one. It requires the chief appraiser of each appraisal district to create and maintain a property tax database that is "accessible to the public" and "searchable by property address and owner," subject to the confidentiality restrictions in Sections 25.025 and 25.026.

What it must contain, for each property on the appraisal roll, is the part that answers a comparison:

What the database must show	Statutory basis
The property's identification number, market value and taxable value	26.17(b)(1)-(3)
"the name of each taxing unit in which the property is located"	26.17(b)(4)
For each non-school taxing unit: the no-new-revenue rate and the voter-approval rate	26.17(b)(5)
For each school district: the rate maintaining the same state and local revenue per student as the prior year, and the voter-approval rate	26.17(b)(6)
"the tax rate proposed by the governing body of each taxing unit in which the property is located"	26.17(b)(7)
The taxes that would be imposed on that property at the no-new-revenue rate and at the proposed rate	26.17(b)(8)-(9)
The difference between those two amounts	26.17(b)(10)-(11)
Date, time and location of the public hearing on the proposed rate, and of the meeting at which the rate will be adopted	26.17(b)(12)-(13)
An e-mail address at which each taxing unit receives written comments on its proposed rate	26.17(b)(14)
For any public improvement district: its name, the total assessment, the annual assessment and any periodic installments	26.17(b)(15)

Line four of that table is the one that matters for a comparison. Before you can compare two addresses you have to know which units tax each of them, and this is the only public record required to tell you that for a specific property.

The database must also link to each taxing unit's own budget-and-rate page under Section 26.18, and to the appraisal review board's protest hearing database under Section 41.13. And a property owner who registers on the appraisal district website is entitled to e-mail notifications when the database updates.

Which record answers which question?

Your question	The record	Who maintains it
What did each taxing unit adopt over the last five years?	County website, Tax Code 26.16	County assessor-collector
Which taxing units tax this specific address?	Appraisal district database, Tax Code 26.17	Chief appraiser
What would this property's taxes be at the proposed rate?	Appraisal district database, 26.17(b)(8)-(9)	Chief appraiser
Is there a public improvement district assessment on this lot?	Appraisal district database, 26.17(b)(15)	Chief appraiser
Who voted for this rate, and how do I reach them?	County website, 26.16(d-1)(2)	County assessor-collector
When is the hearing on next year's rate?	Appraisal district database, 26.17(b)(12)-(13)	Chief appraiser

What do the six rate names actually mean?

Section 26.16(d) requires the county to post a statement defining them, and the statutory wording is clearer than most summaries. Posted immediately below the table, verbatim:

Rate	The statute's own definition
Adopted tax rate	"the tax rate adopted by the governing body of a taxing unit"
Maintenance and operations rate	"the component of the adopted tax rate of a taxing unit that will impose the amount of taxes needed to fund maintenance and operation expenditures of the taxing unit for the following year"
Debt rate	"the component of the adopted tax rate of a taxing unit that will impose the amount of taxes needed to fund the taxing unit's debt service for the following year"
No-new-revenue tax rate	"the tax rate that would generate the same amount of revenue in the current tax year as was generated by a taxing unit's adopted tax rate in the preceding tax year from property that is taxable in both the current tax year and the preceding tax year"
No-new-revenue M&O rate	the same comparison, applied to the maintenance and operations component
Voter-approval tax rate	"the highest tax rate a taxing unit may adopt before requiring voter approval at an election"

The same statement includes a sentence worth keeping in mind when a county's figures look odd: "Each individual taxing unit is responsible for calculating the property tax rates listed in this table pertaining to that taxing unit and providing that information to the county."

The maintenance-and-operations and debt split is the one buyers underuse. Two units can land on a similar adopted rate with very different debt components, and the debt rate is the part tied to bonds already approved.

Where do you go for each DFW county?

There is no single statewide address lookup. The State of Texas maintains a county-by-county directory, and the Dallas-Fort Worth counties do not share a platform. The destinations recorded in the state's own directory, as read on 23 October 2026:

County	Destination in the state directory
Collin	collin.countytaxrates.com
Dallas	dallas.countytaxrates.com/tax
Denton	denton.taxratestexas.com
Ellis	ellis.taxratestexas.com
Tarrant	tarrant.trueprodigy-taxtransparency.com

Three different vendor domains across five counties, none of them a .gov host. Johnson, Kaufman, Parker and Rockwall sit on directory pages that were not read for this article, so no destination is published here for them — check the state directory or the county's own tax office page rather than trusting a search result.

Two practical notes. The Texas.gov transparency page describes what these county sites do in county terms, not address terms: "The website provides information from your local appraisal district and local taxing units to determine a property tax estimate for properties in your county." And one of those county sites returns nothing at all to a plain text request, because it renders entirely in the browser. Open these in a browser, not through a scraper.

What are the limits of these two records?

Four, and they matter.

The 26.17 database is built around proposed rates. Read the list again: the per-property amounts it must show are the taxes at the no-new-revenue rate and at the proposed rate. Its own required statement refers to how "the voter-approval tax rate is calculated." It is designed for the window between a taxing unit proposing a rate and adopting one, and Section 26.17(d) only has to accept an owner's comment form during exactly that window. It is not a year-round adopted-rate calculator.

The 26.16 table is adopted rates by unit, with no property attached. To turn it into a number for one house you still need that house's list of units, which is the other record.

Appraised value is a separate question from rate. Both records are about rates. What a house is appraised at, and which exemptions apply to it, is determined elsewhere and changes the bill as much as the rate does.

The rates you find are historical or proposed, not a quote. A taxing unit can adopt a different rate next year. Comparing two addresses on this year's stack tells you how the stacks differ in kind — a different school district, an extra utility or improvement district — and that difference tends to persist. The precise number does not.

What does this mean when you are comparing two DFW houses?

Three things, none of which require a tax opinion.

First, compare by address, not by city. The city name is one line of a stack that can run to five or six units, and the units that differ most between two nearby houses are usually the school district and any special district.

Second, check for a public improvement district before you fall in love with a new-construction lot. Section 26.17(b)(15) exists because those assessments are easy to miss and they are charged against the property. The database has to show the total, the annual amount and any installments.

Third, look at the maintenance-and-operations and debt split, not just the adopted rate. A high debt component tells you something about what the district has already committed to.

And a limit worth stating plainly: none of this is advice about what you will owe. Rates, exemptions, appraised value and your own circumstances all drive that figure, and the person to put those facts in front of is a CPA or a tax professional. The process above is a matter of public record. Your number is not.

---

Sources

All retrieved 23 October 2026.

Texas Tax Code Sections 26.16 and 26.17 — secondary restatements only. The Texas Legislature's own statute host (statutes.capitol.texas.gov) serves an empty JavaScript shell to an automated request and capitol.texas.gov bill text is blocked to automated retrieval, so the statutory text quoted on this page comes from two commercial publishers rather than from the official text:

• codes.findlaw.com/tx/tax-code/tax-sect-26-16/ and /tax-sect-26-17/ — prints "Current as of January 01, 2026", attributed to "Updated by Findlaw Staff". Prints no session-law history. Carries the publisher's own disclaimer that its codes "may not reflect the most recent version of the law".
• law.justia.com — Texas Tax Code Chapter 26, Sections 26.16 and 26.17. Edition label "2025 Texas Statutes". Prints the Acts amendment history. Carries the disclaimer "These codes may not be the most recent version."

On the agreement between the two publishers. For Section 26.17 the two match word for word across every subsection read, with the only differences being quotation-mark glyphs. For Section 26.16 they match on every subsection except (a-1): FindLaw prints "(a-1) Expired." while Justia prints the subsection's text, which itself states "This subsection expires January 1, 2026." That divergence is recorded rather than reconciled, and nothing on this page rests on (a-1).

On currency. Neither publisher establishes that this text is current as of today. The latest date either prints is 1 January 2026. Justia's history for 26.16 shows a most recent amendment at Acts 2025, 89th Leg., R.S., Ch. 107 (H.B. 3093), Sec. 5, eff. May 24, 2025. For 26.17 the listing order and the effective dates point to different Acts — H.B. 3093 Sec. 6 (eff. May 24, 2025) is listed last, while S.B. 1106 Sec. 5 carries the later effective date of January 1, 2026 — and that is left unreconciled here. Verify any statutory quotation against the official text before relying on it.

Primary, State of Texas

• texas.gov/living-in-texas/property-tax-transparency/ — "Multiple taxing units like your school district, county, and city tax each property..."; "The website provides information from your local appraisal district and local taxing units to determine a property tax estimate for properties in your county." No revision date printed. Note that the page carries visibly stale text referring to information becoming available "beginning in early August 2021".
• texas.gov/living-in-texas/property-tax-directory/ — the county-by-county directory. Pages 2, 3 and 9 were read for the destinations in the table above. Pages 4 through 8 were not read, which is why Johnson, Kaufman, Parker and Rockwall carry no destination here. No revision date printed.

Primary, Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts

• comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/property-tax/rates/index.php — "Tax Rates and Levies". Cites Section 26.16 in its own words: "Tax Code Section 26.16 requires each county to maintain an internet website. The county assessor-collector for each county must post on the internet website certain tax rate information for each taxing unit in the county." Also cites Tax Code Section 5.091 and Comptroller Rule 9.1002. Statewide rate data is published per taxing unit in spreadsheet form, not per property. Page metadata records a modified date of 2026-05-22.
• comptroller.texas.gov/taxes/property-tax/truth-in-taxation/index.php — "Truth-in-Taxation: Tax Rate Adoption". A procedural guide addressed to taxing units, not a taxpayer lookup. Cites 26.17 for the publication duty at Texas.gov/PropertyTaxes, and 26.04 for the rate calculations. Definitions of the no-new-revenue and voter-approval rates. Page metadata records a modified date of 2025-01-13.

Primary, Dallas County

• dallascounty.org/departments/tax/truth-taxation.php — prints the heading "Truth in Taxation Summary" and the subheading "Texas Property Tax Code Section 26.16", with columns for all six statutory rates and tax year labels from 2026 back to 2022, and the note that the information "is posted as a requirement of Senate Bill 2 of the 86th Texas Legislature." Page metadata records a modified date of 2026-10-13. Only the first portion of this long page was retrievable verbatim, so no count of Dallas County taxing units is published here.

Deliberately not claimed on this page

• Any actual tax rate figure for any DFW taxing unit. Dallas County's table was read but its individual rate values were not independently verified against the underlying worksheets, and none is published here.
• A total or average property tax rate for any DFW city, county or address.
• That a property's total rate is the arithmetic sum of its taxing units' rates. No source read states that, so the page says only what the State of Texas does say — that one bill combines the taxes owed to each unit.
• A count of the taxing units in Dallas County or Collin County. Both pages truncated before their lists ended.
• What any of the five county vendor sites actually does. None was opened; only the destinations recorded in the state directory are published.
• Anything about Johnson, Kaufman, Parker or Rockwall county platforms.
• The text of Section 26.16(a-1), for the reason given above.

Fetch failures this run

• tad.org/truth-in-taxation — client error, not read. Tarrant Appraisal District contributes nothing to this page.
• dallas.countytaxrates.com — HTTP 200, 272 characters, a JavaScript notice only. The site renders client-side and cannot be read by an automated text request, which is itself the reason for the "open these in a browser" note above.