Cameron County Property Taxes
How to deal with the necessary evil of property taxes in Cameron County Texas: A how to research property taxes guide.

In today’s day and age information is the key resource in any business transaction. Make no mistake about it, buying a home, Condo or other real estate is in fact the most important business deal many people will ever face. 

There is good news however: never before in history has the average citizen had the power of the internet search engines to enable them to acquire piles of information on the wanted property, its developer, location and value. This article will deal with property taxes.

As many of you already know Texas has no income taxes and the state’s primary source of income is sales and property taxes, I will attempt in layman’s terms to show you how to find out the exact total tax rate for a specific property you are interested in.

Generally Texas tax rates are expressed in dollar amounts per thousand dollars of assessed value. For example if I told you your total tax rate for your property is $1.50 that would be a dollar fifty for each thousand dollars of assessed value. If your property is assessed for $100,000 your property taxes would be ($1.50) X ($100,000) =$1500 per year then divide by 12 months in a year would equal $125.00 a month. 

Heck that’s simple you might say and it is. However, in Texas there are many taxing units that make it difficult to determine the exact dollar amount of the tax rate on a specific piece of property. 

These units consist of cities, counties, special taxing units (fire, ambulance, police, and community colleges) and school districts. So the location of a piece of property within these districts determines the tax rate for that particular piece of property.

Ok with that behind us lets by example look up a specific piece of property in Cameron County, Texas. You may not realize it but the amount paid by citizens as property tax is a matter of public record and available on the internet. 

Yes you can look up Uncle Bills house or that loudmouth down at the factory’s house and see what it assesses for and how much the taxes are and whether Uncle Bill has paid his taxes. Nosey bunches aren’t we? Let’s get started.

If you click on this link Cameron County Tax Office you will see a page like this:

Now looking at the page to the left you may notice that you need the owner’s name to search for a property, you may also click on the down arrow and search by the property’s address or property ID.   You can get that information from the realtor or if the realtor doesn’t want to give you the owners name at least you can get the address.   So whose house /property are we going to look up? Might as well be some politician I suppose so let me suggest the Sherriff of Cameron County, Texas, the Hon. Omar Lucio.  So click on the tax link here Cameron County Tax Office and under Search Type select owners name and type in Lucio, Omar and hit the search button.

Once you hit the search button you will see a page listing all the properties attached to that name.   Select the property you are interested in viewing by clicking on View Details. (See the top image to the left)

This page will give you a summary of that property's legal description and other information. You are one step closer to the main goal of finding the property's tax rate. Now, we are almost at the end of our quest for the specific tax information. One final click away.  Next, click on the “Taxing Jurisdiction”

Now, we are almost at the end of our quest for the specific tax information. One final click away. Next, click on the “Taxing Jurisdiction.” There it is the total tax rate for the property is $1.879609 per thousand. So we have learned how to find the tax rate for any property in Cameron County by using the owners name or the address. The taxes on our 100,000 property without exemptions would be $1,879.60 if it was located next the Sheriffs’ property.

Cameron County Appraisal District