Editorial Standards

Rates come only from government publications

Every rate is copied from the file a state agency publishes, such as a comptroller's report, a department of revenue table or a state open-data set, and each page links to it. We never work out a rate from a budget, a levy, a news story or a rate from a previous year. If a rate hasn't been published, the page says so and shows the last published year. Sources and methods lists the publication for each state.

Every file is checked before it's published

Rates are read from the state's file by our software and checked against the original file before they're published.
A rate that jumps away from the years on either side of it, which agree with each other, is held back until it's confirmed.
Rows a state prints without enough information to place them, such as a rate with no district name, are held back rather than guessed.
Each state's page says which rows were left out and why.

Guides are sourced, and say what they don't cover

State guides and explainers describe how the system works, using the state's own statutes, agency pages and county offices, and list those sources at the end. Guides are drafted with the help of software tools and reviewed before they're published. They aren't legal or tax advice, and they say so.

What we leave out

We don't publish assessed values, owner names or any property records. Calculators use only the value you type in, and nothing is stored. Population figures are used only to decide which pages are listed in search first and never appear on the site.

Corrections

If a rate doesn't match the official publication, email [email protected] with the page and a link to the source. We check every report against the original file. When we change a published rate, we fix the page and record it in the corrections log.

Independence