Maricopa County Outlines Two Ways to Appeal Property Taxes | The Locally Times
County records detail two distinct pathways for property owners to contest assessments: a 60-day appeal window for new values and a four-year lookback for correcting factual errors.
The correct path depends on whether a homeowner is disputing the property's assessed value for an upcoming year or correcting a factual error from a past year. ## Appealing a New Valuation To contest the property value assigned for the 2026 valuation year, homeowners must file an appeal within a 60-day window from the mail date printed on their annual Notice of Value. The Assessor’s Office has not specified the mail date for the 2026 notices. To manage these time-sensitive documents, the Assessor's Office offers an electronic notification service, eNotices. Homeowners can register at enoticesonline.com with an authorization code from a recent valuation notice to receive their documents electronically, a move the county notes reduces printing and postage costs. ## Correcting Past Errors with a Notice of Claim A separate process, the Notice of Claim, allows homeowners to address specific errors for the current tax year, 2025, and the three preceding tax years. Unlike an appeal, a Notice of Claim must be based on a factual error, as defined in Arizona Revised Statutes § 42-16251, or a legal classification error. The Assessor's documents reference the state statute but do not provide a definition of what constitutes a factual error. Homeowners can file a Notice of Claim between January 1 and December 31. By statute, the Assessor's office must respond within 60 days by either consenting to or disputing the claim. Approved changes are applied to future tax years. To correct a property's classification to a primary residence, the homeowner must submit the completed Notice of Claim form along with a copy of their driver's license or voter registration card. ## How Property Classification Affects Tax Bills A property’s legal classification has direct financial consequences. Changing a property's status from a Primary Residence also results in the removal of the State Aid Credit. The Assessor's office states this credit provides a reduction in the primary property tax levied by local school districts for owner-occupied homes. The state then reimburses school districts for the credit amount, meaning a homeowner's loss of the credit also alters how school funding is sourced.