We have gas and oil royalty rights in Dewitt and Gonzales Texas counties. The property was “lost” for awhile because the counties both said that the title address was our “agent” at an inactive PO Box in Houston. We live in California. Both counties said they mailed the tax bills to the PO Box and got no reply and the taxes were not paid. Then we were “found” by EOG, the oil company drilling on the land and started to receive income. We have other properties in these counties so we paid tax on the other properties in these counties but we apparently didn’t pay on this one specific property which was not listed on the tax bill we received. The counties both billed us for back taxes and penalties and hired an attorney to process payment. The first notice of tax due for this property that we received was from the collection attorney. We paid the taxes due, penalties and the counties insisted we pay the attorney fees. We did that but we are not happy how the tax collection process was handled. We checked the Mineral Owners site and don’t see an “agent” listed for any of our properties but the counties say we have to remove the “agents” name and address. We contacted the owner of the PO Box in Houston who has done work for the extended family, but is not our agent, and told him the story and told him he is not our agent. How do we remove the “agent” that we never appointed and is not listed on title with the MineralHolders but that the county says exists?
Did you already know that you weren’t paying taxes on everything you owned in Dewitt and Gonzales counties?
The records used for taxing purposes are apparently not in agreement with the records for mineral rights… Dewitt and Gonzales counties sourced the address of the inactive PO box in Houston from somewhere and those are the records that needs to be corrected. Ask where they got the information from and then proceed from there.
Maybe ask EOG if the records for mineral rights are acceptable or if there is something that also needs to be cleared up as well. It should be cheaper to fix all problems at once rather than coming back in the future to fix a related problem.