Who it covers
There are two limits here, and the first one is not what most summaries say.
The first is who the section reaches, and the official code gives two answers. The Legislature enacted § 41.415 twice in 2009. The version added by HB 1030 applies to an appraisal district established for a county of 500,000 or more, a short list in Texas. The version added by SB 873 applies to any appraisal district that maintained a public website on January 1, 2008 or established one afterward, which today is nearly every district. The official statutes publish both sections, side by side, with a note pointing to each other. Neither has been repealed.
The second limit gets missed more often. The system has to serve the owner of a property that has been granted a residence homestead exemption under § 11.13 for the current tax year. A commercial owner protesting a warehouse is outside it. So is a homeowner whose exemption has not been granted yet.
What the system has to do
Accepting a form is not enough. A covered district has to give the homeowner, electronically:
- A way to file the notice of protest, on the grounds in § 41.41(a)(1) or (a)(2), which are appraised value and unequal appraisal.
- The comparable sales data and other evidence the chief appraiser intends to use at the hearing.
- A settlement offer to correct the value, or notice that no offer is coming.
- A way to accept or reject that offer.
The last two are the ones districts underbuild. A filing portal that cannot deliver a settlement offer does not satisfy the section.
There is a notice duty attached. Instructions for reaching and using the system go out with every notice of appraised value sent under § 25.19.
From the homeowner's side, an electronic protest has to state the ground, give their good faith estimate of the property's value, and include an email address the district can write back to.
Why this page used to say 500,000
Most secondary sources print only the HB 1030 version and its 500,000 threshold, and until November 2026 so did this page. The official text at statutes.capitol.texas.gov carries both. Which one a sub-500,000 district is held to is a question for its counsel. If you are relying on being outside the section, confirm it against the official text. Do not rely on a summary, this one included.
Districts under 500,000
Under the HB 1030 version the section does not reach you. Under the SB 873 version it does, if you run a website. Ask your counsel which governs before deciding. Plenty of smaller districts accept protests electronically regardless, and not because of the statute. Protest season is when the counter and the phones get buried, and that is an operational problem whatever the population bracket says.
Where the website fits
The protest system itself usually belongs to the CAMA or protest vendor, not the public site. The site still carries real weight during the only eight weeks of the year when most taxpayers think about your district:
- The § 41.415 instructions, somewhere a homeowner can find them after the mailed notice has gone in the recycling.
- Deadlines, ARB procedure, and the right forms, in one place and correct.
- A working link to the filing system, so the path from notice to filed protest does not dead end.
Most of the questions a district fields in May are already answered somewhere on its own website. They get asked anyway because nobody could find the answer.
What Valorem AI does here
Protest, records, and ARB pages are written around Texas ARB process instead of adapted from a city template. The ARB page and a Calendar that carries board and ARB meetings next to deadlines, holidays, and closures are both built in. The deadline, the ARB procedure and the forms live on pages your staff maintain in one place.
Filing stays with your protest vendor. Valorem AI links to it.