Texas State Comptroller of Public Accounts

In many states including Texas, Ad Valorem taxes are based on appraised property value. In Texas, each county is responsible for appraising the wells within their county. Each county then bills each mineral owner’s interest the appropriate tax based on their interest and the appraised value. Most counties subcontract the appraisal work to consultants. The Texas State Comptroller of Public Accounts receives each county’s appraisals and is responsible for auditing their appraisals. The Texas State Comptroller of Public Accounts is responsible for not only verifying the appraised values supplied by each county but also verifying consistency of appraisal method between counties.

Specifically, the Texas State Comptroller of Public Accounts used PHDWin exclusively to appraise approximately 11,000 wells last year in less then 2 months with only two engineers. Ochiltree County Appraisal District (Texas Panhandle) uses PHDWin to do their appraisals in-house. Ochiltree County appraises about 1200 leases annually with only one appraiser.

Because of their success with PHDWin, Ochiltree will be appraising another county’s oil and gas properties on a contract basis. Both Ochiltree County Appraisal District and Texas State Comptroller of Public Accounts use PHDWin in conjunction with specialty import/export routines and in-house databases.

The Comptroller’s office required custom integration to and from DB2 databases running on AS400 systems. The Ochiltree county projects also required custom integration to a third party division order system.