April is close and the asset list is still a memory of what the shop owns. Most business personal property renditions are due April 15. A written request to the chief appraiser can push that April date out to May 15. The protest date is a different date.
Tax Code 22.23 sets April 15 as the last day for most renditions. The same section lets an owner ask the chief appraiser, in writing, to extend the date to May 15. We treat the extension as real only after the request is actually sent. A plan to ask is not a request.
We put both days on the calendar. April 15 is the default. May 15 is the extended day, labelled as extended, so nobody files on the 16th of April thinking the extra month was automatic. It is not automatic.
What you file is a list of the tangible personal property used in the business. Description, cost, and year acquired are the bones of it. We pull those from the asset records and from the purchases in the books. A line without a year is a line we ask about, not a line we complete from a hunch.
Harris County Appraisal District is the office that takes this list for property located in Harris County. If the property is in another county, that county's district is the office. We do not send a Harris County list to the wrong district because the mailing address of the company is in the city.
A protest of the appraised value is due on the later of May 15 or the 30th day after the notice of appraised value was delivered, under Tax Code 41.44. You can have a rendition due in April and a protest due after a notice that arrives in May or later. They are different letters.
We will not protest a value as a surprise add on to a bookkeeping engagement. If you want help assembling the facts for a protest, that scope gets named. The facts are the same records. The filing is not the same filing.
Some owners rendition carefully and then ignore the notice. The notice is where the district's number shows up. A perfect list can still be followed by a value you disagree with. We tell you when the notice arrives if we are the ones who see the mail. If the mail comes to you, the date starts when you receive it.
Equipment, furniture, computers, and machinery used in the business belong on the list. Inventory belongs when the instructions for your property say it does. We read the current instructions rather than a habit from a prior year. Categories drift, and a habit is how a new category gets omitted.
Items you disposed of during the year come off. We look for sales of equipment in the deposits and for notes about scrap. Leaving a sold truck on the list is how you argue with a value for something you no longer own.
Vehicles and other items that have their own rules get pulled out and checked against the instructions, not lumped into equipment because the purchase was large. A truck is not a drill press, and the form usually knows the difference. We follow the line the instructions give that truck.
Leased property stays or goes based on who the instructions treat as the owner. We read the lease far enough to see that, and we tell you what we are assuming. You correct the assumption if the contract says otherwise.
The fixed asset schedule, if we are maintaining it, is the rendition's older sibling. Additions during the year should match equipment purchases that were not repairs. Repairs stay expenses. The choice is made when the purchase posts, not in a rush on April 10.
Depreciation lives in the books. The rendition asks for cost and year, which is not the same as net book value, though a reviewer may care about both. We do not substitute book value for cost. Cost is what the form is asking, unless the instructions for that line say otherwise.
We can all appreciate the George R. Brown Convention Center on the east side of downtown, open since 1987, when a show comes to town. You see the event. We see a building and wonder what its depreciated life is and what the book value is now. That wonder is the same wonder we bring to your equipment list. The public building is not on your rendition. Your equipment is.
We build the list from the asset records you already keep. If April is the open item, send the county where the property sits and whether you already have an asset schedule. We will tell you which of the two dates we would put a name beside.
The district sees the list you file. It does not see the argument you meant to make later. If a line is missing, the district's value will not kindly omit the asset. If a line is doubled, you may spend the protest period removing your own duplicate. We would rather spend April on a single clean list.
A description that says various equipment is a description that asks the district to imagine the room. We name the item. A press, a server, a trailer, a set of chairs for a waiting room. Ordinary nouns. The year acquired sits beside the noun. Cost sits beside the year. That is a line a reviewer can accept or question, which is all a line needs to be.
We keep a copy of what was filed and the request for extra time if we sent one. Next year's list starts from that copy, plus the year's additions, minus the year's disposals. Starting from a blank page every April is how the same machine gets a new life story.
If you have property in two counties, this whole sequence happens twice. We will not file one combined list and hope both districts accept it. Say the counties in the note and we will tell you whether the engagement covers both.
Say the county and whether an asset schedule already exists.
This note comes straight to the people who keep these filings.