The Texas business personal property calendar
Four dates, and the first one has already happened.
Texas taxes business personal property — the equipment, the furniture, the computers — separately from the real estate. The calendar is fixed and it does not move for anyone.
January 1 is the assessment date. Whatever you owned on that morning is what you are taxed on for the year, at its value on that morning.
April 15 is the rendition deadline. A rendition is your statement of what you own and what it is worth. A written request extends it to May 15.
Around May 1 the appraisal district mails its notice of appraised value. That is the district telling you what it thinks your equipment is worth.
May 15, or 30 days after the notice was mailed, whichever is later is the protest deadline. Miss it and the district's number stands for the year.
A protest normally begins with an informal conference with an appraiser at the district, and goes to the Appraisal Review Board if it does not settle there. Both go better with a dated, signed opinion of value than with an argument.
The thing worth noticing: the assessment date and the rendition deadline are three and a half months apart, and most practices think about this in April. The number was fixed in January.