Property tax deferral: how to stop the clock without clearing the debt

If you are 65 or older, disabled, or a disabled veteran, you can defer all of the tax on your homestead at 5% a year. If you are none of those but your appraised value jumped, you can defer only the part above a 105% line — at 8% a year. Different sections, different forms, different consequences when you die or sell. Most pages online describe one and label it the other.

Both deferral sections open their interest paragraph the same way: “A tax lien remains on the property and interest continues to accrue during the period collection of taxes is deferred or abated under this section.”

Read that twice, because it is the whole of the risk. A deferral is not an exemption, not a discount, and not forgiveness. It is a legally enforced pause on collection while the debt quietly grows. People reach for it when they cannot pay, which is exactly the situation in which a growing secured debt is hardest to escape.

What it genuinely does do is stop the machinery. Once the affidavit is on file, a taxing unit may not sue you, and under §33.06 your home may not be sold at a tax-lien foreclosure sale. For somebody on a fixed income facing a forced sale, that is not a small thing.

You qualify if the tax was imposed on property you own and occupy as your residence homestead, and you are 65 years of age or older, or disabled as defined by §11.13(m), or qualified to receive an exemption under §11.22 — the disabled-veteran exemption. The veteran route was added by House Bill 217 in 2017; older guidance often omits it.

This deferral covers the whole tax bill on the homestead. There is no threshold and no formula. That makes it far more powerful than the §33.065 version, and it is why the rate is lower.

Why you will still see 8% quoted for this one

Because it used to be 8%. House Bill 150 of the 85th Legislature amended §33.06(d) and nothing else on this point, and the enrolled bill shows the change with the old word struck out: “the annual interest rate during the deferral or abatement period is five [eight] percent.” It took effect on 1 January 2018.

Undated consumer material — including at least one HCAD FAQ still in circulation — predates that and says 8%. For this deferral, that is out of date. For the other one it is still correct, which is precisely how the confusion survives.

One wrinkle worth knowing if your deferral is an old one: HB 150 applies to interest accruing on or after 1 January 2018, and expressly leaves earlier interest governed by the law in force when it accrued. A deferral running since before 2018 can legitimately carry both rates across its life.

If a sale is already scheduled

There is a specific emergency route and it has a hard deadline. To stop a pending tax foreclosure sale you must deliver the affidavit to three places — the chief appraiser of each appraisal district that appraises the property, the collector or the attorney collecting for the taxing unit that asked for the order of sale, and the officer charged with selling the property — not later than the fifth day before the sale.

If the property is sold anyway in breach of this, §33.06(c-1) gives a route to ask the court to set the sale aside. That right cannot be transferred to anyone else, so nobody can buy it from you.

This is the one part of this page where a deadline is measured in days and a mistake is unrecoverable. If a sale date is set, speak to a Texas attorney. We prepare forms; we do not represent anyone, and this is not the place for a self-help solution alone.

What happens when it ends

The deferral runs until you no longer own and occupy the home. Collection does not restart instantly: the statute runs to the 181st day after the tax collector delivers a notice of delinquency following that date. The clock starts at the collector’s notice, not at the move, the sale or the death — so in practice heirs get roughly six months from that notice to pay the balance or sell.

If the owner dies, §33.06(f) carries the deferral on for a surviving spouse who was 55 or older when the other spouse died, where the home was the residence homestead of both. Note the age: 55. Second-hand write-ups routinely say 65 and they are wrong.

How much you can actually defer

Not the whole bill. Only the tax on the portion of your appraised value that exceeds the sum of two things:

1. 105% of the appraised value of the property for the preceding year — note appraised, the capped figure your bill is calculated from, not market value; and
2. the market value of all new improvements to the property.

A “new improvement” is defined at §33.065(i)(1) as one made after last year’s appraisal that increases market value, and the statute expressly excludes ordinary maintenance of the structure, the grounds, or another feature of the property. Replacing a roof that failed is maintenance. Adding a room is not.

So if your value rose by less than 5% and you built nothing, there is nothing to defer under this section at all.

The trap

The statute says an individual may not obtain a deferral, and any deferral previously received expires, if the taxes on the part of the value that is not deferred become delinquent.

That is worth stating plainly: this deferral only protects you while you keep paying the ordinary part of your bill. Miss that, and the protection you were relying on is gone — along with the bar on suing you — and the interest that accrued does not go anywhere.

Three more things the statute says

• Not in your first year. It applies only from the tax year after the first year you qualified the property for a homestead exemption under §11.13.
• No penalty while it runs, and the additional collection penalty under §33.07 can only attach from the 91st day after the deferral ends — compare §33.06’s 181st day.
• Heir property counts. An heir property owner who qualifies the property as their homestead is treated as the sole owner for this purpose.

Take a deferred balance of $8,000 and leave it for five years.

Interest only — the $8,000 is still owed on top. Each year of deferral adds another year’s tax to the balance too, so a real deferral held for years grows faster than this table alone suggests.

Set against that: the alternative for an unpaid tax is not zero. Ordinary delinquency under §33.01 runs a penalty reaching 12% plus 1% a month in interest, uncapped. Measured against that, either deferral is cheap. Measured against paying the bill, neither is.

It is an affidavit, and it goes to the chief appraiser of the appraisal district — not the tax office, and not the Comptroller. For a Harris County home that is the Harris Central Appraisal District. The chief appraiser must then notify every taxing unit in the district; you do not have to tell them one by one.

1. Pick the right form. 50-126 if you are 65 or older, disabled, or a disabled veteran. 50-274 if you are deferring on appreciating value.
2. Fill it in and have it notarised — it is sworn.
3. File it with HCAD. Keep a stamped or scanned copy.
4. If you are deferring under §33.065, keep paying the non-deferred part of your bill.

• Texas Tax Code Chapter 33 — §33.01 penalties and interest, §33.06 and §33.065 in full.
• House Bill 150, 85th Legislature (2017) — the enrolled text amending §33.06(d) from eight percent to five, effective 1 January 2018.
• House Bill 217, 85th Legislature (2017) — adding the §11.22 disabled-veteran route to §33.06(a).
• Comptroller Form 50-126 — Tax Deferral Affidavit for Age 65 or Older or Disabled Homeowner.
• Comptroller Form 50-274 — Tax Deferral Affidavit for Appreciating Residence Homestead Value.
• Harris Central Appraisal District — where the affidavit is filed.

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