Taxpayers oftentimes will try to resolve a property tax matter on their own to save the cost of hiring a professional property tax consultant, with expensive results. We had a client two years ago that did exactly that, and could not get the county to reduce their valuation. Their issue was overvaluation of obsolete machinery and equipment. The client had puchased the equipment for 10% of its original cost in 2007, but rendered it to the county in 2008 at original cost with a 2007 acquisition date. Harris county assessed the value at $5 million, which equates to about $148,000 in taxes. We were successful in obtaining a value reduction to $500,000, and the client saved $133,000 in taxes.