CPA Firms Houston Now Alternative The April property list

What the list actually is

A rendition is the list of tangible personal property a business owns and uses. Furniture, computers, machinery, and the tools that are not part of the building all belong on it. Inventory can belong on it too when the district asks for inventory. We do not treat the list as a guess about what a visitor would see on a walk through. We tie each line to a record you already keep.

The cost, the year you acquired the item, and a plain description are the pieces we want before April arrives. If a record is missing we say so, and we do not invent a year to make the line look complete. The same asset records feed the books. When the month is closed, the list and the ledger are talking about the same objects.

Owners sometimes keep this list in a folder that nobody opens until a notice arrives. We would rather build it while the year is still young enough to find the invoice. A found invoice is a better description than a memory of a delivery. We write the description in ordinary words so a reviewer at the district can tell a drill press from a laptop.

The two dates that matter

For most property the last day to file is April 15. Tax Code 22.23 also lets the chief appraiser extend that day to May 15 when the owner asks in writing. The extension is not automatic. Someone has to request it, and the request has to be in writing. We prepare that request when you want the extra month, and we do not assume the district has granted it until the district says so.

Protest is a different date. A protest of appraised value is due on May 15 or 30 days after the notice of appraised value, whichever is later, under Tax Code 41.44. We do not fold the protest into the rendition. One is a list of what you have. The other is an argument about what the district thinks it is worth. Treating the rendition and the protest as one letter is how April 15 and the later notice date get confused.

We keep both dates on the filing calendar with a name beside each one. The name is the person in your shop who has the invoices, or it is us, if the engagement says the list is in our scope. A date with nobody beside it is how April surprises people. The calendar on this site is the general one. Your engagement is the one with your facts.

How we build it from the books

We start from the fixed asset schedule if you have one, and from the bank and the card statements if you do not. A purchase that was categorized as equipment is a candidate for the list. A purchase that was a repair usually is not. We ask when a line could be either, because the wrong choice changes both the books and the rendition.

Disposals matter as much as purchases. A machine you sold or scrapped should leave the list. If it stays, the district is valuing something you no longer have. We look for the deposit that matches a sale of equipment, and we look for the note you wrote when something was thrown out. If neither exists we ask before we delete a line.

Leased equipment is its own question. Some leases put the property on your list and some leave it with the lessor. We read the lease only far enough to see who is treated as the owner for this filing. We do not give a legal opinion on the contract. We tell you what we see and what the rendition instructions ask for.

What we will not pretend

We will not promise that a careful list lowers the tax. Value is the district's job. Our job is a list that matches the records, filed on a day that is still open. If the district later proposes a value you want to contest, that is the protest, and it has its own date.

This page is general reading for an owner with property in Harris County. A different county has its own appraisal district. We do not paste the Harris County dates onto a shop in another county. If you have locations in two counties, you have two lists, and we say that before we start.

We can build this list without a visit because the records can be shared. You stay with the equipment, and we work from the schedule you already keep. Every Texan can appreciate the drive people would rather not make in April. We like that the work can stay on the records, and then we get back to the invoices.

Nothing here is a client story. No company is named. If your list is behind, catch up gets a date and a price before we start. We would rather name the size of the job than pretend a one hour call produces a rendition.