Property Taxes in the Phoenix Metro

1. How Arizona property tax actually works

Arizona doesn't tax your home against a single market-value number. Every parcel carries two values each year: the Full Cash Value (FCV), which is the assessor's estimate of market value, and the Limited Property Value (LPV), a separate, statutorily constrained value that's actually used to calculate most of your tax bill. For most residential property, LPV is the number that matters -- and thanks to a 2012 ballot measure, it usually grows far more slowly than the market does.

That measure, Proposition 117 (approved by voters on November 6, 2012 with 56.67% in favor, effective starting the 2014 tax year), caps how much a property's LPV can increase in a single year at 5% over the prior year's LPV for most existing properties (new construction, new parcel splits, and a few other changes are added to the roll at a different starting value). In a metro where home values have swung sharply from year to year, this means your taxable value can lag well behind what your house would actually sell for -- a structural cushion against tax-bill volatility built directly into Arizona's valuation system. This 5% cap and 2014 effective date are confirmed against the certified ballot measure text (Arizona Secretary of State); the Arizona Department of Revenue or your county assessor can confirm how it's being applied to your specific parcel this tax year.

Arizona property tax bills are also split into a primary rate and a secondary rate. The primary rate funds general "maintenance and operation" budgets for the state, county, city, community college district, and school district, and is subject to a separate constitutional limit (Arizona Constitution, Article 9, Section 18) capping primary taxes on an owner-occupied primary residence at 1% of the property's LPV, with the state covering part of the gap for school districts through supplemental state aid. The secondary rate funds voter-approved bonds, overrides, and special taxing districts (including the Community Facilities Districts covered in our governance guide) and is not subject to that 1% cap. A given tax bill is the sum of both.

2. Assessment ratios and the current rate mechanism

LPV itself isn't what a tax rate is applied to, either -- Arizona applies a further assessment ratio, set by property-tax "legal class," to LPV before any rate is applied, producing the much smaller assessed value that actually gets taxed. Owner-occupied residential property (Legal Class 3) and residential rental/other residential (Legal Class 4) are assessed at a considerably lower percentage of LPV than commercial and industrial property (Legal Class 1): residential property is assessed at 10% of LPV, while commercial property is assessed at 18% of LPV, a gap that has narrowed over the past two decades as the legislature has phased commercial ratios down from a historical high near 25%. These are the current published ratios as of this writing; the commercial ratio in particular has been a recurring subject of legislative phase-down bills, so it's worth a quick confirmation with the Arizona Department of Revenue or your county assessor if you're doing precise math on a specific property.

Once the assessed value is set, your county's Board of Supervisors, city councils, school district governing boards, and any special districts each set their own primary and secondary tax rates (expressed per $100 of assessed value) -- there is no single statewide rate. That's the reason Section 4 below gives ranges rather than one number per city.

3. Senior Valuation Protection and other relief programs

Arizona's main relief program for older homeowners is the Senior Valuation Protection Option (often called the "senior freeze"), administered county by county. Qualifying homeowners who are 65 or older, have owned and occupied the property as a primary residence for at least two years, and meet an income limit set annually by the county (indexed to area median income, and higher for a household of more than one owner) can apply to freeze their home's LPV for three years, renewable if they still qualify. The freeze locks in the taxable value, not the tax rate or the dollar amount owed -- your bill can still move if local tax rates change -- and it must be actively applied for and renewed through the county assessor's office; it isn't automatic. Confirm the current income threshold and application deadline directly with the Maricopa or Pinal County Assessor, since the income limit in particular is recalculated annually.

Arizona has at various points also funded a state-paid homeowner's rebate that reduces the primary school-district tax rate on an owner-occupied residence (appearing as a state-aid credit line on the tax bill rather than something a homeowner applies for separately). We were not able to confirm whether this rebate is currently funded and active for the current tax year in this research pass -- it has been reduced or suspended by the legislature in past budget cycles, so treat any specific dollar figure you've seen elsewhere as needing a direct check against your own current tax bill or the Arizona Department of Revenue, rather than assuming it applies.

4. Representative figures by county

Nearly all of this site's 28 Phoenix-area guides sit in Maricopa County; two -- Apache Junction, and the eastern/southern edge of Queen Creek -- extend into Pinal County. We deliberately don't publish a single "the rate is X" figure per city here: primary and secondary rates are set separately by dozens of overlapping jurisdictions (county, city or town, school district, community college district, and any special or community facilities districts), so a single number would be stale within months and can vary parcel to parcel depending on which districts cover a specific address. The ranges below describe roughly where combined effective rates on full cash value tend to land across this site's guide cities -- Arizona is consistently ranked among the lower-property-tax states nationally, and these figures should be read as illustrative starting points, not quotes.

Sources: Arizona Constitution Article 9 (assessment and primary-rate framework); Arizona Revised Statutes Title 42, Chapter 15 (valuation and Proposition 117 codification); Arizona Department of Revenue property tax publications; Maricopa County Assessor and Pinal County Assessor public materials, as summarized in this research pass -- we did not independently re-verify current-year combined rates for any specific city or special district in this pass, and the ranges above are illustrative rather than quoted figures. This page's neighborhood-to-county mapping follows this site's own Phoenix neighborhood guide data.

5. Appealing your valuation

Arizona's appeal process generally runs: the county assessor mails an annual Notice of Value (typically in late winter/early spring), and property owners who disagree can file an administrative appeal with the county assessor's office within a set window after the notice date (commonly cited as 60 days, though this should be reconfirmed for the current tax year). If unresolved, owners can generally appeal further to the State Board of Equalization (for Maricopa and other larger counties) or a county board of equalization, and beyond that to Arizona Tax Court. A separate track exists for challenging the tax bill itself, rather than the valuation, after rates are set. We were not able to independently confirm exact current-year deadlines for this specific appeal chain in this research pass -- confirm the current process and dates directly with the Maricopa or Pinal County Assessor's office before relying on this summary for an actual appeal.

6. How we keep this page current

The structural mechanics in Section 1 (the FCV/LPV split, Proposition 117, the primary/secondary rate distinction) are settled statutory and constitutional history and don't change often; the Proposition 117 cap (5%, effective the 2014 tax year) and the Section 2 assessment ratios (10% residential, 18% commercial) have been independently confirmed against public sources as of this writing. The Senior Valuation Protection income threshold and homeowner's rebate funding status in Section 3, and the county-level rate ranges in Section 4, are exactly the kind of numbers the legislature and individual counties revisit most often -- confirm those specifically against the Arizona Department of Revenue or your county assessor before relying on them for a specific property. If you spot something on this page that's changed, or notice a broken link, we'd like to know -- see our contact information.