Editorial Policy

1. Editorial Mission

U.S. property taxation is local and varied. There are 3,143 counties (and county equivalents) across 50 states, each with its own Assessor (or Property Appraiser, Auditor, Equalization Director, or CAD), its own Tax Collector (or Treasurer, Trustee, Tax Commissioner), its own exemption forms, its own appeal calendar, and its own portal. We exist to give U.S. property owners, buyers, agents, and advisors plain-English access to each county’s procedures — without trial-and-error portal navigation, without third-party aggregator markup, and without the confusion that comes from generic national property-records content that doesn’t reflect state-specific framework.

2. Source Hierarchy

We work to a six-tier source hierarchy, where higher-tier sources govern when sources conflict:

• Tier 1 — Primary authority: The county Assessor and county Tax Collector / Treasurer (.gov / official portal). Their own published pages are the primary source for that county’s procedures, URLs, office details, NOAV / bill-mailing schedule, and current procedures.
• Tier 2: The state Department of Revenue, Department of Taxation, Department of Finance, or equivalent state agency. Authoritative for state-level statutory framework and inter-county equalisation guidance. In Texas, this role is filled by the Texas Comptroller Property Tax Assistance Division (PTAD) under Tex. Tax Code §5.
• Tier 3: The state’s property-tax statutes themselves — California R&T Code, Texas Property Tax Code, Florida Statutes Ch. 192, New York Real Property Tax Law, and each state’s equivalent.
• Tier 4: IAAO professional standards and USPAP administered by the Appraisal Foundation; Appraisal Subcommittee oversight under FIRREA Title XI.
• Tier 5: State property-tax-association publications (Texas Association of Appraisal Districts, California Assessors’ Association, Florida Association of Property Appraisers, and state counterparts in other states).
• Tier 6: Established real estate and property-tax publications — background context only.

Full detail on each tier is on our Sources & Methodology page.

3. Verification Workflow

1. Identify the right authoritative source. County Assessor + County Tax Collector / Treasurer .gov, state Department of Revenue, state property-tax statutes.
2. Verify URLs are live. A human editor clicks every link before publication — both Assessor side and Tax Collector / Treasurer side.
3. Walk through the property-search portal on the live Assessor portal.
4. Walk through the bill-lookup portal on the live Tax Collector / Treasurer portal.
5. Cross-check exemption procedures and deadlines against state Department of Revenue reference.
6. Cross-check assessment-appeal procedure against state statutes and the appeal body’s published procedures.
7. Dial-test both offices’ phone numbers on quarterly cycle.
8. Editor sign-off — second editor reviews end-to-end including FCRA non-CRA notice.

4. Independence

countytaxassessor.org/ is independent. We are not affiliated with any U.S. county office, any state Department of Revenue or Department of Taxation, the Texas Comptroller PTAD, TDLR, IAAO, the Appraisal Foundation, NACo, or any commercial property-records aggregator, title company, or real estate platform. No county office, state agency, or third party reviews our content prior to publication. No payment is accepted for editorial coverage of any specific county or any specific procedure.

5. Advertising Relationships

We are funded by display advertising. Our editorial content is never altered to favour any advertiser. We decline advertising in these categories:

• Operations marketed for FCRA-permissible-purpose decisions (tenant screening, employment, credit, insurance) using public-records data
• Operations that misrepresent themselves as county Assessors, county Tax Collectors / Treasurers, state Departments of Revenue, the Texas Comptroller, TDLR, or other state authorities
• Paid-access services for free county records
• Unlicensed property tax representation services operating without state-specific licensure (TDLR in Texas, comparable bodies elsewhere)
• Foreclosure-list aggregators that misrepresent state and county tax-sale processes
• Adult content, gambling, cryptocurrency promotion, payday lending, or other categories incompatible with our editorial position

6. FCRA Editorial Line

7. Corrections

If a guide is wrong, we want to know and we want to fix it. Reader-reported corrections are our priority queue. We process corrections within 7 business days, with a 48-hour expedited path for actively-broken county portal URLs. We add a small editorial note when a substantive correction is made.

8. State Legislative Cycles

State property-tax statutes change with each state’s legislative session. Most state legislatures meet annually or biennially. We review our exemption, appeal, and ag-use content after every relevant state legislative session and update before the next county appraisal cycle. Recent substantive changes that propagated through state portfolios include the Texas 2023 increase of the school-district residence homestead exemption to $100,000, California ongoing implementation of Proposition 19, Florida updates to Save Our Homes assessment increase limits, and parallel changes in other states. Our state pages flag when a substantive change has recently occurred.

9. Authors & Contributors

Site content is written and reviewed by editors who have spent time researching, writing about, and (in some cases) personally dealing with U.S. county tax assessor procedures. Specialist subject-matter reviewers — including state-licensed property tax consultants and real estate attorneys — are consulted for substantive editorial questions, particularly after state legislative sessions. We do not publish ghost-written content from third parties without editorial review.

10. AI & Automation

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. We do not auto-generate or auto-publish county guides.

11. Contact

For corrections, editorial questions, or sourcing inquiries: info@countytaxassessor.org