Maricopa County, Arizona property tax

ACS 5-year median real estate taxes paid (table B25103) divided by ACS 5-year median value of owner-occupied housing units (table B25077), county-wide. This is a ratio of two independently estimated medians — not the median of the ratio, and not a rate any parcel is billed. It reflects the actual mix of overlapping districts, exemptions and assessment caps as experienced by owner-occupants, and it lags: a 5-year sample centres about two and a half years before its end date.

Layer 1 of the county property-tax corpus: a MEASURED baseline from ACS 2020-2024 5-year, not a published rate. No statutory rate, assessment ratio or exemption has been collected for these counties yet, so nothing here should be read as what a particular property would be billed.

Three corrections, each of which would have produced wrong numbers. (1) Class 1 is 16% for TY2025, not the 18% widely quoted — that was the rate through TY2021, and the class is mid phase-down to 15% by TY2027. (2) Proposition 117 did NOT put every ad valorem tax on limited property value: A.R.S. §42-13304 excepts personal property and centrally valued Class 1 property — mines, utilities, pipelines, telecom — which remain on full cash value and uncapped. (3) Since TY2015 the PRIMARY and SECONDARY taxes are levied on the SAME value base; the distinction is purpose and limits, not value. Laws 2013 Ch. 66 deleted "primary net assessed valuation" and "secondary net assessed valuation" from the statutes entirely. That third point conceals a data trap worth stating plainly. The Department still publishes "Primary NAV" and "Secondary NAV" as separate columns and they differ enormously — $92.37bn against $157.40bn statewide for TY2025. Those are not two levy bases. The first is limited-value-based and the second full-cash-value-based, and the second survives only because constitutional debt limits are computed on it. Applying a secondary RATE to secondary NAV would overstate the tax by roughly seventy per cent. Note also that relief here keys off the CLASS, not the ratio. Class 3 and Class 4 share an identical 10% ratio, yet Class 4 residential rental receives no 1% cap, no Homeowner's Rebate and no senior freeze. And Arizona has no general homestead exemption at all — A.R.S. §33-1101 is creditor protection with no property tax effect. One item is NOT ESTABLISHED: §15-972(K) caps the state's 1%-cap liability at $1,000,000 per county, and the Joint Legislative Budget Committee reports it was held unconstitutional by the Maricopa County Superior Court in May 2016. The text remains on the books and the opinion was not retrieved, so treat enforceability as unsettled.