Burnet County Beekeeping Ag Exemption

Burnet County CAD takes the land as it sits on January 1 of the application year. Under CURRENT USE, Burnet County CAD's ag manual requires that land to be in qualifying agricultural use as of that date, and it then rules intent out. An applicant's intention to have agricultural use, in the manual's own words, "does not qualify as agricultural use." Bees on order, hives bought and stacked in a barn, an agreement signed in December with nothing standing outside, none of that reaches the standard. Live colonies have to be out on the place and working.

So the calendar runs backward from January 1. September is our cutoff for a signed agreement on a new place, and the three months that follow are for hauling colonies in and getting them settled. Buy your own bees instead and you're on the supplier's schedule. A package of bees isn't available here until April or May, so a landowner who starts shopping in October is looking at bees on the land the following spring, well past the date the district measures. Either way, the tax year you can file for is decided a long way ahead of April.

A first beekeeping application comes with a stack of documentation behind it. Burnet County CAD's ag manual, in its BEEKEEPING section, requires documentation showing the purchase of the bees, the queens and the hives, an account of what food sources are available on the place, a map of the property showing hive placement, and a basic marketing plan for how the honey and the rest of what the hives make gets used or sold. You apply on form 50-129, the state's Application for 1-d-1 (Open-Space) Agricultural Use Appraisal, and whatever material backs the claim of agricultural use goes in alongside it.

The marketing plan trips people up, and it shouldn't. It's a plain statement of where the honey goes. Under a managed beekeeping agreement the honey off your land belongs to you. We'll make an offer on the harvest if you don't want to sell it yourself, and our packaging option covers bottling and labels if you want it leaving the place in jars. Any of those gives the plan something concrete to say.

Behind all of it the land needs a history. Burnet County CAD requires five of the preceding seven years in agricultural use before it grants a beekeeping application, and the history stays with the land when the place changes hands. Those five years have give in them. The manual allows land to qualify even where the historical use didn't meet the degree of intensity for all or part of them, so long as agriculture was the principal use in those years.

The valuation is another matter. Change the ownership and a fresh application is required, which is why Burnet County CAD sends new owners a Purchase Confirmation Letter or a New Owner letter saying one has to be submitted if they want the agricultural use valuation. File rather than assume.

Proving those years is a paperwork job. Where historical use is in doubt, the manual names an IRS Schedule F, receipts from buying or selling livestock, expense receipts, dated pictures, and sworn and notarized affidavits from a neighbor or a lessee as ways to verify it. If you bought the place recently and whoever had it before ran cattle or cut hay, those records are the history.

On a tract with no farming past at all, hives standing on January 1 and a form in by April 30 won't get the valuation for that tax year. The history has to be there first. A year counts toward the five where agriculture was the land's principal use in it. Burnet County CAD applies degree of intensity to current use only. The district decides whether a first season of bees makes agriculture the principal use of your particular tract, so put that question to the office before you count a year.

Where a property doesn't already hold agricultural value, that history goes in with the application as a five-year record, and the expense receipts, the Schedule F and the affidavits run one per history year.

A house on the place moves the numbers. Put a residential improvement on the tract, a house or a manufactured home, and Burnet County CAD assigns part of the land to residential use. The manual starts that at one acre and calls it the homesite. It comes out because the improvement is there, whether or not you've claimed the residence homestead exemption. The district may use less where the residence has been surveyed on under an acre, or take the fenced area around it instead.

It can run the other way too. Where an owner files a homestead application claiming up to twenty acres, the district may take the acreage named there as the residential piece, valued at market along with the improvements on it. Work your hive count off what's left once that residential acreage comes out. That's our arithmetic, not a step Burnet County CAD sets out. A five-acre parcel with a homestead on it won't meet the five-acre minimum for a beekeeping operation, and the manual requires five acres plus additional acreage to account for the homestead improvement. Take the plat to Burnet County CAD and get the additional acreage settled.

If somebody other than you is running the bees, Burnet County CAD requires a current copy of the agreement to go in with the application. The manual asks that the document identify the property by number, name who owns it, state how many acres are under the agreement, and give the name, address and phone number of whoever is working the land. It also asks what the land is leased for and how long the term runs. Where rent is paid, the manual asks for that amount too, and it asks that all parties sign and date the document.

Our own managed beekeeping agreement is signed by both parties and names the owner, the property ID, the acres, the purpose and the term, along with our own name, address and phone. The district decides whether a file is complete.

Approval isn't the end of it. Burnet County CAD inspects every property it has approved for beekeeping at least once a year, and the standard is that the hives are maintained and kept alive. Appraisers physically inspect a property to determine its current and principal use. Where a place can't be clearly seen from the road, the use can't be determined, and the gate is locked, the owner gets a letter requesting immediate access. On the visit the appraiser notes the soil, the fences, the water source, and whatever else it takes to decide what the land is being used for.

That yearly visit is part of why we're on your place monthly, year-round, rather than twice a season. The colonies stay where we set them, and we don't put them on trucks for pollination work. Every visit gets logged in Outlaw Hideout, which you sign into for a report to give the district whenever you want one. Every apiary we run holds a current Texas Apiary Inspection Service registration, and your place is named on it, with documentation you keep. Nothing in Burnet County CAD's manual touches state registration. It's worth doing anyway, because it's more evidence the bees are actively managed.

Colonies die. Burnet County CAD counts live hives, so where we manage the bees we replace a loss and get the count back up to the row your acreage falls on.

Land inside a city limit faces an extra bar, and Burnet County has a fair number of city limits in it. Burnet, Marble Falls, Bertram, Granite Shoals and Cottonwood Shores are among the towns a rural tract can end up against. A place inside city limits has to clear one of two conditions before the district will consider it for agricultural value. One condition is that the city doesn't serve that land with general services on a par with what it provides in other parts of town. The other is that the tract has run principally in agriculture, without a break, through the five preceding years.

Burnet County CAD requires more of city land once it's approved. It has to be used continuously with no rest periods, and it has to stay in agricultural operation for twelve months out of the year. That twelve-month standard belongs to the city-limits provision, so check which side of a city line your place sits on before you plan a hive year around it.

April 30 is the filing date. If it falls on a weekend or a holiday, the deadline moves to the following business day. Texas Tax Code 23.54(d) gives the chief appraiser room to push that date back, up to 60 days, where there's good cause. So if something is going to keep you from filing on time, raise it with the district office rather than let the date go by.

Without an extension, a filing after April 30 is late, and the district still takes it until the appraisal records are approved, usually mid-July. A late one that gets approved comes with a 10 percent late filing penalty.

Texas Tax Code 23.541(a-2) is the exception, and it's built for a recent buyer. Four things have to hold. The tract held the valuation in the preceding tax year. The new owner uses the land in materially the same way as the former owner used it. The same individuals who oversaw or conducted that use in the preceding tax year still oversee or conduct it. The fourth is the deadline. The application has to land by whichever falls later, the delinquency date on that year's tax bill or a year to the day after the transfer. Where all four hold, the penalty doesn't apply. Ask the district office whether your purchase meets all four.

Coming back off the valuation costs money. Under Texas Tax Code 23.55 the rollback takes back three tax years of the difference the valuation made, and no interest is added. The rollback follows a physical change of use, and it reaches only the part of the tract that changed, so building on one corner exposes that corner and leaves the pasture around it alone.

Selling the place doesn't set it off, and neither does claiming the land as part of a residence homestead. The chief appraiser determines if and when a change of use occurred, and the manual requires written notice of that determination explaining the owner's right to protest it. A protest goes to the Appraisal Review Board within 30 days after the notice is delivered.

Burnet County is Highland Lakes country on the eastern edge of the Llano Uplift. Granite outcrops, thin rocky soils, live oak and juniper savanna over rolling hills. Big tracts of native pasture and brush suit bees far better than row crops, which is part of why the beekeeping route works on land that would struggle to feed a herd. We walk your place before a hive goes out, writing down what already blooms on it and the months it comes in. Our rundown of what blooms across Central Texas and when goes month by month.

If something in the manual reads ambiguously against your particular place, call Burnet County CAD at (512) 756-8291. The district keeps an office in Burnet. Its staff set the standard your application gets measured against, and filing on an assumption costs you the tax year.