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By Chuck Magee
If you buy land for sale in Texas beware if you change the use of the land you could become responsible for tens of thousands of dollars in taxes that have nothing to do with you.
If you are in the market for some nice pasture, ranch, or hunting land for sale in Texas you may want to sit up and read this carefully. In Texas the tax base is lowered dramatically for what is called Ag land or agriculture land, this is to give farmers and ranchers a much needed tax break and I have no problem with this tax relief for them and most Americans do not have a problem with it either. In Texas there is a little known tax law or tax code that you will not be told about by the local County Appraisal District until its to late, it is call a roll back tax and if you get charged by the Texas County tax assessor it could bankrupt you depending on the value of the land you bought and what the tax bill would have been over the previous five years for the land.
If your wandering yes you did here me right the Texas County Tax Collector will charge you the new owner of the land not the old owner that was in possession of the land and yes I did say five years worth of back taxes on your land for sale in Texas. Want to know all you have to do to get nailed with this tax, just change the use of the land from agriculture to anything commercial or just not with the Texas Ag exemption. If you do change the use of the rural land the Texas County Collector will calculate what the tax bill would have been for the previous five years and yes again that was five years and hit you the new owner of the land with that tax burden, how fair is this.
I have yet to get anyone in the county appraisal district office to explain to me how this could possibly be fair, the only thing you will here from them is do it and pay us. What I don’t understand is how the Texas legislature could let this go on but that’s a discussion for another day like so many things. I advise you if you are looking for land for sale in Texas and it does not matter what county in Texas you need to make sure of the use of the land, how the Texas County Appraisal District Office has the land valued now and over the past five years and if it has been in Ag exemption you need to keep it that way or find another tract of land.
I will give you one example on a land tract I bought less than an hour from Dallas all we did was put a bulldozer on the property and clear the fences that were all grown up and clear out some of the mesquite trees that you can’t even drive a tractor over without busting a tire. This was enough for the Appraisal District to hit us with over a $ 75,000.00 dollar tax bill for what the taxes would have been had it been commercial the previous five years so we had to run fast to our attorney to get out of that one and it was because we had a good attorney.
So if you are looking at land for sale in Texas, make sure of your land use prior to closing and signing a contract, if it is in Ag exempt keep it that way or be prepared to pay dearly.
About the Author: In 2000 Chuck and his wife Lindey developed a website called Mississippi-Landsource.com. The website was launched for uniting the real estate market in Land For Sale In Mississippi. In 2009 more sites were launched as sister sites for other states like Land For Sale In Louisiana and Land For Sale In Alabama.
Source: isnare.com
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