Waller County Property Tax & Sales Tax

Waller County Tax Rates - At a Glance

Waller County Current Tax Rates Summary

Tax Type	Rate	Notes
Property Tax (combined)	~2.19% of value	No single county rate - the sum of school district, city, and county on a City of Hempstead / Hempstead ISD parcel. Representative nominal stack; typical effective rate runs about 1.36% of market value.
County's own rate	$0.556187 / $100	Waller County government portion only (main levy $0.532596 [M&O $0.439463 + debt $0.093133] + Road & Farm-to-Market $0.023591)
Hospital / college district	None	Waller County has no countywide hospital district and no community college taxing district
Annual Vehicle (Car) Tax	None	Texas levies no annual value-based vehicle property tax
Sales Tax	8.25%	6.25% state + 2.0% City of Hempstead; no county sales tax; groceries and most unprepared food exempt
Homestead Exemption	$140,000 school + 10% cap	Statutory school-district homestead; over-65 owners get an additional $60,000 school exemption.
Due Date	January 31	Delinquent February 1; statewide protest deadline May 15

Waller County Property Tax

Waller County property tax comes in two numbers that are easy to confuse. The county's own adopted rate is $0.556187 per $100 of value for the 2025 tax year - and it is only the Waller County government's portion. Your actual bill is the sum of every overlapping taxing unit that covers your parcel: your school district, your city, and the county. Combined, the typical total effective rate in Waller County is about 1.36% of market value - an estimate from Census ACS 2023 5-year data (median real estate taxes paid $3,971 divided by median home value $292,000). Because the mix of taxing units differs from parcel to parcel, there is no single "Waller County rate" for a full bill; the figures below are worked examples.

Waller County's own rate of $0.556187 is posted as two units: the main Waller County levy ($0.532596, split into maintenance and operations $0.439463 plus debt service $0.093133) and a separate Road and Farm-to-Market (RFM) fund that adds $0.023591 for county roads and bridges. What makes a Waller County bill unusually clean is what is missing: there is no countywide hospital district and no community college taxing district, so most parcels stack just three units - school, city, and county. Prairie View A&M University, in the city of Prairie View, is a state institution and exempt from local property tax. The wrinkle is growth: the county's fast-developing southeast corner along the Grand Parkway in the Houston metro carries a heavy layer of municipal utility districts (MUDs) - Harris-Waller and Waller County MUDs that can levy up to $1.50 per $100 inside their subdivisions, on top of the base stack.

How a typical Waller County (City of Hempstead) bill is built (taxing-unit stack)

School district City County

City of Hempstead / Hempstead ISD parcel - adopted rates per $100 (2025 tax year)

Taxing unit	Rate /$100	Type
Hempstead ISD	$1.076000	School
City of Hempstead	$0.559215	City
Waller County	$0.556187	County
Nominal total	~$2.191402	~2.19%

Rates from the Waller County Appraisal District 2025 Tax Rates schedule. This example is for a City of Hempstead / Hempstead ISD parcel; your total depends on your city and school district. Other school districts in the county include Waller ISD ($1.062600, which serves Prairie View), Royal ISD ($1.069917), and part of Katy ISD ($1.117100). Other cities include Prairie View ($0.730490), Brookshire ($0.565140), and Waller ($0.446400). Many newer parcels along the Grand Parkway also carry a municipal utility district (MUD) of up to $1.50 per $100, plus special districts such as the East Waller County Management District and the Brookshire-Katy Drainage District.

Where your property-tax dollar goes

Hempstead ISD ~49.1% City ~25.5% County ~25.4%

On a typical City of Hempstead / Hempstead ISD parcel, Hempstead ISD is about 49.1% of the nominal bill ($1.076000 / $2.1914 nominal total), the City of Hempstead about 25.5%, and Waller County about 25.4%. Percentages are rounded and use the nominal posted rates before any exemption - after the $140,000 school-district homestead exemption the taxable amount drops sharply, which is part of why the county's typical effective rate (about 1.36%) sits below the nominal stacked rate (about 2.19%).

Who appraises, bills, and collects in Waller County

• The Waller County Appraisal District sets appraised values, processes homestead exemptions, and runs protests, at waller-cad.org (979-921-0060, Hempstead).
• The Waller County Tax Office (Tax Assessor-Collector) collects the property tax and also handles vehicle registration and titling, at co.waller.tx.us (979-826-7600).

For value questions, start with the appraisal district; to pay, start with the Waller County Tax Office.

Homestead exemption, the 10% cap, and key dates

If you own and occupy your home as your principal residence on January 1, you can claim a residence homestead exemption, and you generally apply through the Waller County Appraisal District. For a Hempstead ISD parcel, the statewide school-district exemption removes $140,000 from the value the school district taxes for the 2025 tax year. If the owner is 65 or older, an additional $60,000 ISD exemption applies.

Some Waller County units also grant local-option homestead and over-65 exemptions, but the exact per-unit amounts are published on the appraisal district's exemption schedule, which we did not extract in this pass. Because a percentage or fixed exemption interacts with each unit's own value, the calculator below models only the statutory $140,000 school-district homestead and treats its output as the conservative (high) end - a real Hempstead homestead bill is lower. Confirm the exact exemptions on your account with the Waller County Appraisal District.

Separately, the 10% homestead appraisal cap limits how much your homestead's appraised (taxed) value can rise to 10% per year, not counting new improvements. The cap applies to the appraised value used for your bill, not the market value the appraisal district sets, and it starts the year after you first qualify for the homestead exemption.

Key dates: payment is due January 31 and unpaid amounts become delinquent February 1. The statewide protest deadline is May 15 or 30 days after your appraisal notice is delivered, whichever is later. Texas Tax Code Section 1.06 rolls any deadline that falls on a weekend or holiday to the next business day. We were not able to extract a Waller County-specific penalty-and-interest schedule from an official source in this pass, so no penalty percentages are stated on this page.

How to protest your appraisal

Protests go to the Waller County Appraisal District, which publishes its protest procedures and deadlines and runs the property search and appeals process. File and track everything at waller-cad.org. Some private firms offer to handle protests for a percentage of any tax savings; such firms exist and charge a contingency fee, but we do not cite any savings figure or success rate as fact - results vary by parcel and year.

Estimate your Waller County property tax

Sources: Waller CAD 2025 Tax Rates (county rate and the Hempstead-area unit rates), the Waller County Appraisal District (appraised values and exemptions), the Texas Comptroller (sales tax), and Census ACS 2023 5-year estimates (typical effective rate). See the tax guides for how Texas homestead, protest, and appraisal-cap rules work.

Vehicle Taxes in Texas

Unlike many states, Texas does not levy an annual value-based property tax on cars or other vehicles. There is no yearly "car tax" bill in Waller County. Instead, vehicle taxes in Texas work two ways:

• One-time motor-vehicle sales/use tax of 6.25% at purchase. For a private-party sale, the tax is charged on the greater of the actual sales price or 80% of the vehicle's Standard Presumptive Value (SPV). A vehicle received as a gift is taxed at a flat $10 instead.
• A flat annual registration fee (plus any local add-ons), which is a fixed fee, not a tax on the vehicle's value. In Waller County you register and title through the Waller County Tax Office.

So if you searched for a Texas car or vehicle sales tax, the answer is the one-time 6.25% charged when the vehicle is titled - there is no recurring vehicle property tax to budget for each year.

Waller County Sales Tax

The combined sales tax rate in the City of Hempstead is 8.25% - the Texas maximum. It is made up of the 6.25% state rate plus a 2.0% City of Hempstead local rate. Waller County does not levy its own county sales tax, so outside a city the rate is just the 6.25% state rate. Texas law caps the total local portion at 2.0%, so once a city reaches 2%, no further local rate can stack on top - which is why 8.25% is the maximum combined sales tax here.

City of Hempstead (Waller County) sales tax components

Component	Rate
Texas state rate	6.25%
Waller County	0.00%
City of Hempstead (local)	2.00%
Combined rate	8.25%

The 2.00% local share is the maximum Texas allows and is entirely the city's here (Waller County collects no county sales tax). Outside city limits the rate is 6.25%. Groceries and most unprepared food are exempt from sales tax.

Real Example: a $292,000 Hempstead Home

Here is how the numbers flow on a representative $292,000 City of Hempstead / Hempstead ISD home (the county median value) with a homestead exemption (owner under 65), applying only the school-district homestead to the school unit:

• Market value: $292,000.
• Homestead exemption: the $140,000 school-district exemption drops the Hempstead ISD taxable value to $152,000. The other two units tax the full $292,000 in this simplified example.
• Stacked total: school $152,000 × 1.076000% = ~$1,636; city $292,000 × 0.559215% = ~$1,633; county $292,000 × 0.556187% = ~$1,624.
• Estimated annual bill: about $4,893 per year.
• Monthly equivalent: about $408 per month.
• Effective rate: about 1.68% of market value in this simplified example.

How this compares to the county-wide median. The Census ACS county-wide median bill is about $3,971 (roughly 1.36% effective). This Hempstead city example lands above that, and that is expected: Hempstead is an incorporated city, so it carries a full three-unit stack, while much of Waller County is unincorporated (no city rate) and county-wide medians also include lower-value and homesteaded rural parcels. A homesteaded rural parcel (school + county only) on the same $292,000 value would pay closer to $3,259 (about 1.12%). A non-homestead $292,000 Hempstead parcel would pay closer to the full nominal ~2.19%, or about $6,399, while a real over-65 homestead - with the extra $60,000 school exemption and any local-option amounts - would be lower than this example.

Limitations:

• Your total varies by school district and city; a Waller ISD (Prairie View), Royal ISD, Katy ISD, or rural parcel uses a different stack, and a Grand Parkway MUD parcel can be materially higher.
• Local-option homestead exemptions (and over-65, disability, and disabled-veteran exemptions) on the county and city units are not modeled in the simplified example above; this example applies only the school-district homestead, so a real homesteaded city bill is lower.
• Waller County's exact penalty-and-interest schedule was not available from an official source in this pass and is not stated here.
• New-construction homes are often taxed on land only in the first year, then jump once the structure is on the roll.
• This is an estimate, not a parcel-exact bill. The typical effective rate is a Census ACS estimate, not a guaranteed rate.