How We Verify Figures
Last Updated: August 31, 2026
Almost every site in this niche — including two of the Texas Comptroller's own pages — has at some point quoted a stale exemption figure. Texas Proposition 11 changed the headline number by $50,000 in a single legislative session. Here is exactly how we try not to be one of the stale pages.
1. Find the primary source
We locate the Texas Comptroller page, Tax Code section, county appraisal district page, or bill analysis that states the figure directly — not a summary of it.
2. Record it with a tax year and a date
Every figure is stored with the tax year it applies to, the statute section (if any), the source URL, and the date we checked it — in a single data file that every page reads from, so a correction only has to be made once.
3. Flag anything we can't confirm
If a figure can't be traced to a primary source — a county's exact local-option amount, an exact vote percentage, a federal tax detail — we mark it unverified and say so on the page, instead of publishing a guess.
4. Re-check on a schedule, not just when we remember
Dollar figures and deadlines: every January. County local-option amounts: every August–September, after rates are adopted. Statute citations: after every legislative session. A build step blocks publishing if a figure hasn't been re-checked in 18 months.
5. Correct in public
When something changes or turns out to be wrong, we fix the page and log it on our public corrections page with the date and what changed.
See our editorial policy for what counts as a source, and our corrections log for the public record of what we've fixed.