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TaxMath

Pima County, Arizona property tax

What owner-occupants in Pima County (population 1,080,149) report paying, measured by the Census Bureau, and the Arizona law that decides how a bill is built.

Provisional This is a measured outcome, not a rate anyone is billed. Property tax here is levied by overlapping county, city, school and special districts, so two homes in Pima County with the same value can owe different amounts. A levied county rate has not been collected yet.

What homeowners report paying

Surveyed effective rate
0.71%
±0.01% at 90% confidence (0.70% to 0.72%).
Median annual tax bill
$2,272
±$29 at 90% confidence ($2,243 to $2,301).
Median home value
$319,700
±$3,338 at 90% confidence ($316,362 to $323,038).

Coefficient of variation 0.01: a tight estimate by Census standards.

Among the 15 Arizona counties with a point estimate, Pima County ranks 2 from the highest. The middle Arizona county sits at 0.51%. Neighbouring ranks are often inside each other’s margin of error, so read a rank as a neighbourhood, not a position.

How this is measured

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.

How Arizona builds a property tax bill

Value taxed
Value at acquisition, growing at most 5.0% a year until the property changes hands
Reassessment
Every year
Who assesses
The county assessor
Lien date
January 1 · Tax year 2025, first half due 1 October 2025, second half 1 March 2026
Assessment of owner-occupied homes
10% of market value
Assessment of commercial property
16% of market value
County government levies
Yes
Business personal property
Taxed, first $269,905 exempt

Commercial versus residential

  • Commercial property is assessed at a different statutory ratio.

Limits

  • Assessed value may grow at most 5.0% a year (owner-occupied homes, other residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural, vacant land).
  • The bill is capped at 1.0% of value (owner-occupied homes).
  • A jurisdiction's total levy may grow at most 2.0% a year, new construction excluded.

Exemptions and relief

ProgramAmountReaches
Business personal property exemption (A.R.S. §42-11127)$269,905all levies · statewide
Homeowner's Rebate (A.R.S. §15-972(B)-(D))50% of value, up to $600school levies only · statewide
Widow, widower and disabled persons exemption (A.R.S. §42-11111)$4,748all levies · statewide
Senior valuation protection (Ariz. Const. Art. IX §18(7))Value or tax frozenall levies · statewide
Notes on Arizona law

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.

Arizona law record: tax year 2025, official, verified 2026-08-03.

Sources & Trust

Each source is rated by what published it. The Census is authoritative about what households reported and silent about any rate, which is why it sits at tier 2.

The measurement

Arizona law

Other Arizona counties