Florida Property Tax Assessment Checker

Florida is one of the two states on this site where the limit can be tested arithmetically from two notices, so this edition of the checker is offered here. It compares the assessed value on your TRIM notice with the assessed value on last year’s, and — if your property held the homestead exemption in both years — shows whether the change is larger than the Save Our Homes limitation allows. Everything runs in your browser. See our privacy page.

Enter the assessed value, not the market value

This is the one input this tool can get wrong for you, so it is worth stating plainly. Your TRIM notice carries three figures — market value, assessed value and taxable value — and Save Our Homes limits the assessed value. A homestead’s market value may rise by far more than three per cent in a year without the limitation being breached; that is the entire point of the limitation. Enter the market value and the tool will flag an increase the law permits, which is worse than no answer at all.

What the result does and does not mean

• It can tell you whether the change between the two assessed values you entered exceeds the lower of three per cent or the change in the Consumer Price Index — the two legs of § 193.155 — and it shows the arithmetic so you can check it.
• It cannot tell you whether your value is correct. Exceeding the limitation is a question about the assessed value; whether the figure was right in the first place is a question about the market value, and that is what a petition to the Value Adjustment Board is for.
• It does not know the year’s CPI figure. The limitation is the lower of three per cent or the CPI change, and that number is published for each tax year. This site deliberately does not print it — a figure superseded every January would be wrong for most of the year — so where the CPI leg is the lower one, your own TRIM notice is the authority.
• It does not read your notice. You type the numbers. Nothing is fetched from a county property appraiser’s office, and the result is not a valuation, not an appraisal, and not a prediction of how a Value Adjustment Board will rule.

Where the process goes from here

A petition about valuation goes to the county’s Value Adjustment Board on or before the 25th day following the mailing of the assessment notice, and the TRIM notice states the date — see the VAB petition page for what the petition has to say and where it is filed. What the board accepts as evidence, and what the counties specifically reject, is on the evidence page. If you want the whole calendar in one place, including what happens to your taxes while a petition is pending, that is the deadline page.

One warning worth carrying into that process: a reduction in your market value does not necessarily reduce your assessed value, because the assessed value is already the lower of the limited figure and the market figure. If Save Our Homes is holding your assessed value well below the market value, winning a market-value reduction may change nothing on your bill. The Save Our Homes page sets out the two conditions under which a reduction does reach the bill.