Your Tax Bill Gets Decided in August and September. You Can Be Told Before It Happens.
By Sam Holloway · July 31, 2026
The protest window closed months ago. The rate window is open now, and almost nobody watches it.
There are two halves to a property tax bill and most people only ever fight one of them. The first half is what your property is worth, which the appraisal district decides and which you can protest in the spring. The second half is the rate, and that gets set by every taxing unit that touches your address over the next two months. Almost nobody shows up for that part.
Montgomery County's notice of estimated taxes says the timeline plainly. Your local property tax database is updated regularly during August and September as local elected officials propose and adopt the property tax rates that will determine how much you pay. That database lives behind Texas.gov/PropertyTaxes, and it shows what each entity taxing your property would charge you if it adopts the rate it has proposed.
The useful part is that you do not have to keep checking. The county points residents to the Montgomery Taxes truth-in-taxation portal, where a "Register for Notification" option lets you create an account, add your own properties under the My Properties tab, and mark them to receive updates. Then the movement comes to you.
Three terms make the notices readable. The adopted rate is what a taxing unit's governing body actually votes in. The no-new-revenue rate is the rate that would raise the same money this year as last year from the same properties, which makes it the honest baseline when someone says a rate was not raised. The voter-approval rate is the ceiling a taxing unit can adopt before an election is automatically triggered. A unit landing above no-new-revenue but below voter-approval is collecting more money without asking you, and doing so entirely legally.
Worth knowing who is in the queue. The county is one line on your bill. So is Magnolia ISD, the city if you are inside it, the emergency services district, the college district, and for a great many households out here, a municipal utility district. Each sets its own rate on its own calendar. The county has published its Fiscal Year 2027 preliminary budget, which is the document that precedes its own rate decision.
Questions about a specific line go to the Montgomery County Tax Office, 400 N. San Jacinto Street in Conroe, 936-539-7897. Tammy McRae is the Tax Assessor-Collector, and the office will provide contact information for any individual taxing unit on request.
The window is short and it is open right now. A rate adopted in September lands in a mailbox in October, and by then the argument is over.
Editor's note on format. We chose straight reporting rather than our two-column both-sides layout because nothing here is contested. The tax calendar, the statutory rate definitions and the notification sign-up are settled facts published by the county. When a specific taxing unit proposes a specific rate, and residents disagree about whether it should be adopted, that story gets the two-column treatment.
Sources: the Montgomery County, Texas 2026 Notice of Estimated Taxes and the Tax Office's Truth in Taxation summary at mctx.org, which set out the August and September update window, the Texas.gov/PropertyTaxes database, the Register for Notification process through the Montgomery CAD portal, the Tax Assessor-Collector's office details, and the county's published Fiscal Year 2027 preliminary budget. Rate definitions are those given on that page under Texas Property Tax Code Section 26.16. Corrections to newsroom@themagnoliastandard.news.