Texas reserves its richest property tax breaks for people — homeowners who actually live in the house, seniors over 65, Texans with disabilities, disabled veterans. The Travis Central Appraisal District has now flagged 15 such exemptions on its 2026 roll for removal — every one of them held by a company. Five of the fifteen were also claiming the senior exemption. A company has no birthday.
Confirmed by TCAD Chief Strategy Officer Cynthia Martinez, July 23, 2026, after each account was re-checked against live district records. These fifteen came out of 23 accounts submitted — itself only a sample of what the screen has flagged.
Texas Tax Code §11.13 is not ambiguous. A residence homestead must be owned by an individual and occupied as that individual's principal residence on January 1. An LLC cannot occupy a house. A corporation cannot make one its principal residence. The moment title moves to an entity, the exemption is supposed to come off the roll.
Qualifies under §11.13(a)–(b). May stack Over-65 (§11.13(c)), Disabled Person, or Disabled Veteran (§11.22) exemptions.
Exemption improper for every year the entity held title. §11.43(i) lets the district back-assess up to five years plus a 10% penalty.
This was never meant to be the whole picture. It was a first batch — enough accounts to see what Travis Central Appraisal District would do when it was shown entity-owned homesteads sitting on its own roll. Of the 23 submitted, the district placed 15 in “HS needs to be removed” and said they appeared to be errors. Every house below is one of those fifteen. Five were also claiming the over-65 exemption.
Twenty-three accounts is what we submitted — not what exists. The same screen has flagged additional Travis County accounts that have not been put to the district yet, including entity-held exemptions running longer than any of the fifteen below. Those appear on this page in aggregate only, with owner names and addresses withheld until they are either confirmed by TCAD or cleared. The screen is still running.
These are not clerical near-misses. An over-65 exemption requires a birth date. A disabled-veteran exemption requires a VA disability rating. Every account below is owned by a legal entity, and every one is stacking a person-only exemption on top of the homestead.
Names are withheld here. Most of these have not yet been put to TCAD for a determination, and nobody has been asked to respond. The ones the district has already confirmed are marked, and named in full further down.
These aren't exemptions that slipped through last spring. Each bar spans the deed date that moved a property into a company's name through to today — the entire period the exemption was improper. Owner names withheld, on the same basis as above.
Texas Tax Code §11.43(i) limits back-assessment to the five most recent years, regardless of how long the exemption ran. A 28-year exemption is recoverable for five. The other 23 years are gone.
Property tax is zero-sum. Every dollar of value wrongly exempted is a dollar the school district, the county, the hospital district and the community college recover from everyone else's bill. These figures cover only the fifteen TCAD has confirmed.
The annual figure is a conservative floor, not an estimate. Seven of the fifteen carry a $1,000 placeholder minimum because their appraised value equals market value — no cap savings to measure. The true annual loss is higher than what is shown here, and deliberately so.
On July 23, 2026, TCAD Chief Strategy Officer Cynthia Martinez confirmed by email that the following accounts require homestead removal. These are not allegations — they are the district's own determination, which is why they appear in full here. Together they represent $13.4M in wrongly exempted value across the taxing units that granted them.
| Owner | Situs | Held | Market value | Annual loss | 5-yr recoverable | Stacked |
|---|
Held = years between the deed into the entity and 2026. Annual loss and 5-year recoverable use the §11.43(i) five-year window; rows showing $1,000 are the conservative placeholder floor described above.
The district flagged 15 of the 23 accounts in the first batch. The remaining flagged Travis accounts go over the same way.
Travis County Clerk records fix the exact date title moved to the entity — which sets the §11.43(i) recovery window for each account.
A 28-year exemption on a corporate deed means no automated check ever ran. What does TCAD screen for, and when did it last run?
Travis is one of 254 counties. The same screen against the statewide roll has already flagged accounts in dozens more.
The weekly civic ledger
One email a week on what Texas governments are doing with your money — every figure sourced and dated. Free, always.
No spam, no paywall, ever.