Miss your property tax appeal deadline and the assessment stands for the entire year — there is no general late-filing exception in most states, and no service company can reopen a window that has closed. Yet there is no single national date. The deadline is set by your state, and often your county, it is usually earlier than homeowners expect (25 to 45 days after a notice across much of the country), and it comes in two fundamentally different shapes that trip people up in opposite ways.
Relative deadlines start the clock when your notice is mailed — Texas, Florida, Georgia, and Illinois work this way. The trap is throwing away the very document that started the countdown. Fixed deadlines are a statewide or local calendar date that arrives whether or not you have absorbed your new value — Ohio's March 31, Connecticut's February 20, New Jersey's April 1, New York's Grievance Day. The trap there is that the window opens and closes on the calendar's schedule, not yours. Knowing which kind you face is the whole game.
| State | Appeal deadline (first administrative level) | Type | Files with |
|---|---|---|---|
| Texas | May 15, or 30 days after the appraisal notice is mailed — whichever is later | Hybrid | County Appraisal Review Board (ARB) |
| California | July 2 – Sept 15 (or Nov 30 in some counties); 60 days after notice if mailed after Aug 1 | Fixed window | Assessment Appeals Board |
| Illinois | ~30 days after the township assessment list is published (varies by county/township) | Relative | County Board of Review |
| New Jersey | April 1 (Jan 15 in Assessment Demonstration Program counties) | Fixed | County Board of Taxation |
| New York | Grievance Day — 4th Tuesday in May in most towns; NYC Mar 15; Nassau Mar 1 | Fixed (local) | Board of Assessment Review |
| Florida | 25 days after the TRIM notice is mailed (usually mid-September) | Relative | Value Adjustment Board (VAB) |
| Massachusetts | Feb 1 in most cities/towns — the first actual-tax-bill installment due date | Fixed | Board of Assessors (abatement) |
| Connecticut | Feb 20 (towns may extend to Mar 20) | Fixed | Board of Assessment Appeals (BAA) |
| Pennsylvania | County-set — commonly Aug 1 or Sept 1; Allegheny Mar 31; Philadelphia first Monday in October | Fixed (county) | County Board of Assessment Appeals |
| Ohio | March 31, for the preceding tax year | Fixed | County Board of Revision (BOR) |
| Georgia | 45 days from the mailing date of the annual Notice of Assessment | Relative | Board of Tax Assessors → Board of Equalization |
| North Carolina | Until the Board of Equalization & Review adjourns — typically first Monday in April (can extend to first Monday in May) | Fixed (county) | Board of Equalization & Review |
| Virginia | Locality-set — many fall February–April | Fixed (local) | Board of Equalization |
| Michigan | March, when the local Board of Review meets — exact date is on your assessment notice | Fixed (local) | Board of Review |
These dates move. Deadlines are set by statute and, in county-varies states, by local ordinance — and they change with legislation. The dates above are verified against primary state sources as of July 2026, but the only date that governs your appeal is the one on your own assessment notice. When in doubt, call the board listed above before the window closes.
The relative-deadline states — Texas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois — are dangerous precisely because they feel forgiving. Your clock does not start until the appraisal district or assessor mails your notice, so there is no fixed date to circle. But once that envelope goes out, the window is short: 25 days in Florida after the TRIM notice, 45 days in Georgia after the Notice of Assessment, roughly 30 days in Illinois after the township list is published, and 30 days in Texas if the notice arrives after mid-April. The document that lands in your mailbox is the starting gun, and homeowners routinely file it under “deal with later” until the deadline has already passed.
The fixed-deadline states — Ohio (March 31), Connecticut (February 20), New Jersey (April 1), New York's Grievance Day, Massachusetts (February 1) — fail in the opposite direction. The date is knowable a year in advance, but it arrives on the calendar's schedule, not yours. Many of these deadlines fall in the winter or early spring, months before people are thinking about property taxes at all, and the appeal window can close before the year's assessment has fully registered as a problem. In these states the discipline is to mark the date now, not to wait for a trigger that never comes.
A handful of states blur the line. Texas is a hybrid: a fixed May 15 floor that extends to 30 days after mailing when notices go out late. California runs a fixed statutory window (July 2 to September 15, or November 30 in some counties) that flips to a relative 60-day clock if the assessor mails after August 1. The lesson holds either way: read your notice, and do not assume this year's date matches last year's.
Everything else about a property tax appeal — the comparable sales you gather, the assessment-ratio math, what the hearing looks like — only matters if you file on time. This is also where the contingency-fee service companies quietly profit. A homeowner who misses the window feels like they “need help” next year and signs up for a 30-to-50-percent cut of the savings, when the only thing they actually missed was a date. The deadline is not the hard part of an appeal; it is the free part. Meeting it yourself costs a stamp or a web-form submission, and it is the single highest-leverage action in the entire process.
If you file on time, the rest is learnable: here is what an assessment appeal hearing actually looks like, how to think through filing yourself versus hiring out, and what to do if you filed on time and still lost. The flip side of deadline timing is your state's reassessment cycle — the two together tell you not just when you can appeal but which year is worth appealing.
One common and costly mix-up: the deadline to appeal your assessed value is separate from the deadline to apply for an exemption (homestead, senior, disability, veteran). They are different filings, with different forms, different offices in some states, and different dates — and one does not preserve the other. A senior who files a homestead-exemption application on time has done nothing to protect an over-assessment challenge, and vice versa. If your issue is an exemption rather than the valuation itself, see the senior and disability exemption guide for those separate windows.
In almost every state the assessment stands for the entire tax year and there is no general late-filing exception. Your next opportunity is the following year's appeal window. A few states allow narrow relief for clerical or factual errors through a separate correction process, but that is not the same as an appeal of value.
No. The appeal deadline is tied to your assessment notice, not your tax bill. The one common exception is Massachusetts, where the abatement deadline coincides with the first actual-tax-bill installment.
No. You generally must pay the tax as billed while the appeal is pending; a successful appeal produces a refund or credit. Filing does not extend any other deadline.
Usually yes. Non-receipt rarely excuses a missed deadline. In relative-deadline states the clock starts when the notice is mailed, not received, so confirm your date directly with the county assessor.