Sources & Methodology

1. Overview — Why a Tiered Hierarchy

The United States has 3,143 counties and county equivalents across 50 states. Each state sets its own property-tax statutes; each county runs its own Assessor and Tax Collector / Treasurer offices, often with locally elected officials. The result is significant variation in terminology, procedures, forms, deadlines, and online portals from state to state and even from county to county within a state. We work to a tiered hierarchy so that, when sources disagree, we know which source governs.

Examples of major U.S. county offices we cover: Cook County Assessor (Illinois), Los Angeles County Assessor (California), Maricopa County Assessor (Arizona), Harris Central Appraisal District (HCAD — Houston), Dallas Central Appraisal District (DCAD), Tarrant Appraisal District (TAD — Fort Worth), Bexar Appraisal District (BCAD — San Antonio), Travis Central Appraisal District (TCAD — Austin), Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser (Florida), Orange County Property Appraiser (Florida), Cook County Treasurer (Illinois), Los Angeles County Treasurer and Tax Collector, Maricopa County Treasurer, Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector (Texas combined office), Dallas County Tax Assessor-Collector, Tarrant County Tax Assessor-Collector, Miami-Dade County Tax Collector, Orange County Tax Collector (Florida), and equivalents in every other state.

These state agencies typically publish ratio studies, sales-assessment ratio analyses, equalisation tables, exemption-procedure guidance, training materials for county Assessors and Tax Collectors, and reference materials on assessment-appeal procedures.

Key state statutes we reference throughout the site:

• California: Revenue & Taxation Code (Proposition 13 valuation framework, Prop 19 transfer rules, R&T §1603 appeals)
• Texas: Texas Property Tax Code (Title 1, Subtitle E of the Texas Tax Code) — including §11.13 residence homestead, §11.131 100% disabled veteran, §23.51 1-d-1 ag-use, §41.44 ARB protest deadline, §42 judicial review
• Florida: Florida Statutes Chapter 192 et seq. (Save Our Homes assessment limitation, homestead exemption, TRIM Notice)
• New York: Real Property Tax Law (RPTL)
• Illinois: Property Tax Code (35 ILCS 200), including Board of Review and Property Tax Appeal Board procedures
• Pennsylvania: County Assessment Act and county-class-specific assessment statutes
• Ohio: Ohio Revised Code Title 57 (Taxation), with County Auditor responsibilities
• Georgia: Title 48 (Revenue and Taxation) including Board of Tax Assessors and Tax Commissioner roles
• Michigan: General Property Tax Act (MCL Ch. 211) and Headlee Amendment / Proposal A
• New Jersey: N.J.S.A. Title 54 and Title 54A
• Plus state-specific property-tax statutes in every other state

• International Association of Assessing Officers (IAAO) — sets professional standards for mass appraisal and assessment administration. Standards we reference include the IAAO Standard on Mass Appraisal of Real Property, Standard on Verification and Adjustment of Sales, Standard on Ratio Studies, Standard on Property Tax Policy, Standard on Public Relations, and Standard on Professional Designations.
• Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) — administered by the Appraisal Foundation. Sets ethics and performance standards for individual appraisers.
• Appraisal Subcommittee (ASC) — the federal body that supervises state appraiser regulatory programs (asc.gov) under Title XI of FIRREA.
• National Association of Counties (NACo) — referenced for county-level governance context.

8. Verification Workflow — Eight Steps Before Anything Goes Live

1. Identify the right authoritative sources. The county’s own .gov Assessor and Tax Collector / Treasurer portals, plus the state Department of Revenue, plus the relevant sections of the state property-tax statutes.
2. Verify URLs are live. A human editor clicks every link before publication.
3. Walk through the property-search portal on the live Assessor portal — performing real searches to confirm the walkthrough matches the current interface.
4. Walk through the bill-lookup / pay-online portal on the live Tax Collector / Treasurer portal.
5. Cross-check exemption procedures and deadlines against the county’s published forms and state Department of Revenue reference.
6. Cross-check the assessment-appeal procedure against the county’s published forms and the state’s controlling statute.
7. Dial-test both offices’ main phone numbers. Quarterly cycle.
8. Editor sign-off. A second editor reviews end-to-end, including a fresh check on the FCRA non-CRA notice and the “verify with county before relying” caveat.

9. Sources We Avoid

• People-search aggregators that combine public records with personal-information profiles
• FCRA-prohibited tenant-screening operations that market public property records as a substitute for CRA-issued reports
• Paid-access services for free county records — operations charging for what the county provides free
• Unlicensed property tax representation services operating in violation of state-specific licensure laws (Tex. Occ. Code Ch. 1152 in Texas, comparable laws elsewhere)
• Title-broker operations not licensed in the relevant state
• Foreclosure-list aggregators that misrepresent state and county tax-sale processes
• Operations claiming affiliation with county Assessors, Tax Collectors, or state Departments of Revenue when they have none
• Anonymous user-generated forums as standalone authority on current procedures
• Other property-records aggregator sites — we work to the original county, not to other aggregators
• Outdated training manuals — we work to the current edition published by each state Department of Revenue or trade association

10. FCRA Framework Reminder

Information on the site is general educational content drawn from authoritative public county and state sources. It is not a consumer report under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq.) and countytaxassessor.org/ is not a Consumer Reporting Agency. Do not use any content on this site to make employment, credit, insurance, tenant-screening, or any other FCRA-permissible-purpose decisions. Public availability of county property tax records does not exempt a user from FCRA liability when those records are used for FCRA-regulated decisions.

11. State Confidentiality Protections

Most states have laws protecting certain categories of property owners from public disclosure of certain identifying information in Assessor and Tax Collector records. Examples include Tex. Gov’t Code §552.117 (Texas) protecting home address information of various categories of officials (judges, peace officers, prosecutors, jurors); the California Safe at Home Confidential Address Program; the Florida Address Confidentiality Program; and similar programs in nearly every state. The Texas Office of the Attorney General Address Confidentiality Program (ACP) protects survivors of family violence, sexual assault, stalking, and trafficking; comparable programs exist in most states. Our editorial content respects these protections.

12. AI and Automation Policy

We use software tools for spell-check, grammar review, and routine drafting assistance. However, no editorial fact, URL, exemption deadline, appeal procedure, address, phone number, or walkthrough step on countytaxassessor.org/ is published from AI without human verification against the county's own published page. Every county guide passes through human editorial review, including the eight-step verification process. We do not auto-generate or auto-publish county guides.