Bergen County, New Jersey 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.

A NOMINAL NEW JERSEY RATE IS NOT A RATE ANYONE CAN USE. The general tax rate is struck against ASSESSED value and the effective tax rate against TRUE value. The Division says so itself, on the page that publishes both: "The General Tax Rate is a multiplier for use in determining the amount of tax levied upon each property... This rate is used to compute the tax bill", while "The Effective Tax Rate is a statistical study that enables the comparison of one district to another district (based on the assumption that all districts are at 100% valuation). This rate is NOT to be used to compute the tax bill." Union Township, Union County prints a 2025 general rate of $23.323 per $100 against an effective rate of $2.270; Loch Arbour Village prints $0.379 against $0.412. Only the effective rate is comparable to anything outside New Jersey, and only the pair together is comparable to another New Jersey town. This is Pennsylvania's Common Level Ratio problem at a much larger scale, because the assessing unit here is the municipality rather than the county. THE FACTOR BETWEEN THEM IS NOT THE DIRECTOR'S RATIO, AND THIS IS THE SHARPEST TRAP IN THE STATE. New Jersey publishes TWO municipal ratios, certified by different bodies for different purposes. The Director's Ratio (the Chapter 123 average ratio, certified by the Director on 1 October under N.J.S.A. 54:1-35.1) governs tax appeals. The COUNTY EQUALIZATION RATIO — column 1(b) of the county equalization table, certified by the county board of taxation by 10 March under N.J.S.A. 54:3-17 to 54:3-19 — is the one the effective rate is computed against. Checked by arithmetic across the whole 2025 rate table: taking effective ÷ general for each municipality and comparing it with the Chapter 123 table for the same tax year, 392 of 529 matched rows agree within one percentage point and 137 DO NOT; 87 of the 564 print an effective rate ABOVE their general rate, which no Chapter 123 ratio in the table can produce. The two published examples in this record are both in that tail. Irvington Township's implied ratio is 112.60%, its Chapter 123 ratio 44.53%, and its county equalization ratio 113.20%. Loch Arbour's implied ratio is 108.71%, its Chapter 123 ratio 173.96%, and its county equalization ratio 109.18%. THE TWO RATIOS COINCIDE UNTIL A MUNICIPALITY REVALUES, WHICH IS EXACTLY WHEN IT MATTERS. In Essex County's 2025 table Belleville, Bloomfield, Montclair and Maplewood carry equalization ratios identical to their Chapter 123 figures to the second decimal; Irvington and West Orange, both flagged "R = Revaluation" in the table's own legend, do not, because the county board equalized on the new roll while the Chapter 123 table still measures the old one. That is the same fact that makes Chapter 123 unavailable on appeal in a revalued municipality under N.J.S.A. 54:3-22(f). USE THE COUNTY EQUALIZATION TABLE TO CONVERT A RATE AND THE CHAPTER 123 TABLE TO TEST AN ASSESSMENT; swapping them is wrong in about a quarter of the state and wrong by more than 45 percentage points in a dozen municipalities. THE RATIO EXISTS BECAUSE NOTHING FORCES A REVALUATION. No statute sets an interval. N.J.A.C. 18:12A-1.14 gives a county board twelve criteria for ordering one — a coefficient of deviation over 15%, a Director's Ratio of 85% or lower, ten years or more since the last revaluation, and nine others — with the Director's approval required before it proceeds, and the Division's own brochure states the consequence plainly: "If assessments are not adjusted annually, a deviation from 100% of true market value occurs." So the deviation is a policy outcome, not a defect, and it is measured and published rather than hidden. THE 100% RATIO IS A COUNTY RESOLUTION, NOT A LAW. N.J.S.A. 54:4-2.26 provides that a county board's percentage level "shall be expressed as a multiple of 10%, and no level so established shall be lower than 20% or higher than 100% of the standard of value", and 54:4-2.27 requires the resolution before 1 April of the pretax year, binding for at least three years, with a default of 50% if a board sets none. All 21 boards have chosen 100%, so the statutory ratio recorded on every class here is 1 — and it would remain 1 in a town assessing at 8.89% of market, because the two are different quantities. Confusing the county percentage level with the Director's Ratio is the central New Jersey error. CHAPTER 123 IS THE DIRECTOR'S RATIO'S ONE ENFORCEABLE CONSEQUENCE, AND THE TABLE YEAR IS NOT THE MEASUREMENT YEAR. On appeal, the county board, the Tax Court or the Superior Court compares the subject's assessment-to-true-value ratio against a COMMON LEVEL RANGE of ±15% around the district's average ratio (N.J.S.A. 54:3-22, 54:51A-6, 54:4-62); outside that band the taxable value is reset by applying the average ratio to true value. READ THE COVER PAGE. The table headed "FOR USE IN THE TAX YEAR 2026" was certified 1 October 2025 and amended by the Tax Court on 30 January 2026, and it is NOT this record's table: tax year 2025 is governed by the certification of 1 October 2024, published as 2025CH123 and mirrored exactly by the 2024 Table of Equalized Valuations (Absecon 68.62 in both, Union Township 9.78, Loch Arbour 173.96). The 2026 pair reads 62.77 / 8.89 / 138.65 for the same three towns. Quoting a ratio one year out is the ordinary way to be wrong here, and pairing an 8.89% ratio with a $23.323 general rate and a $2.270 effective rate — as an earlier draft of this record did — produces $2.073 and reconciles nothing. Two further limits: the table's own footnote is "RATIOS IN EXCESS OF 100% ARE TO BE CONSIDERED 100%", and 30 municipalities exceed 100% on the 2026 table (21 on the 2025 one); and Chapter 123 is UNAVAILABLE to an appellant in a municipality that has just implemented an approved revaluation or reassessment (N.J.S.A. 54:3-22(f), Handbook §1105.21), who must prove discrimination the old way. NEW JERSEY IS NOT CLASSIFIED, AND SAYING SO IS AS LOAD-BEARING AS SAYING MINNESOTA IS. The uniformity clause requires all real property to be "assessed according to the same standard of value, EXCEPT AS OTHERWISE PERMITTED HEREIN" and taxed "at the general tax rate of the taxing district" — and the only thing permitted therein is qualified farmland, added by amendment at ¶1(b) precisely because ¶1(a) would otherwise forbid it. The negative rests on what N.J.A.C. 18:12-2.2 DOES NOT SAY: it defines Classes 1, 2, 3A, 3B, 4A, 4B, 4C, 5A, 5B, 6A and 6B and assigns no ratio and no rate to any of them. DO NOT OVERSTATE THAT NEGATIVE THE WAY AN EARLIER DRAFT OF THIS RECORD DID. The regulation's phrase "for the purpose of the Table of Equalized Valuations (school aid table)" appears once, in subsection (g)1, and governs only the AGGREGATION of Classes 4A, 4B and 4C into a single "Class 4 (Other)" — the same sentence begins "While Classes 4A, 4B, and 4C are required to be SEPARATELY DESIGNATED ON THE TAX LIST". The classes are therefore live MOD-IV coding, not a reporting convenience, and they drive the class-stratified assessment-sales ratios and coefficients of deviation the Division publishes. What makes New Jersey unclassified is the absence of any ratio or rate attached to them, not the purpose of the vocabulary. (18:12-2.2 amended by 50 N.J.R. 664(a), effective 16 January 2018 — before this record's lien date.) FOUR OF THE FIVE RELIEF PROGRAMMES NEVER TOUCH THE BILL. ANCHOR is a State check or direct deposit beginning 15 September; the Senior Freeze reimburses the increase over a base year after the full bill has been paid; Stay NJ is paid in quarterly instalments to the claimant; and the $50 Property Tax Credit rides the income tax. Only the $250 senior/disabled deduction, the $250 veteran deduction and the total disabled-veteran exemption reduce what the municipality bills. Stay NJ is the one to watch: P.L.2023, c.75 originally paid it to the municipal tax collector as an on-bill credit and P.L.2024, c.88 now permits either channel at the Director's election, fixing check-or-direct-deposit only "for the first year in which the... program is implemented". And all five are jointly capped: total relief "cannot be more than the property taxes paid on your principal residence... for the same year". THE 2% LEVY CAP IS SOFTER THAN ITS NAME, AND IT IS NOT THE ONLY CAP. N.J.S.A. 40A:4-45.45 adds back, on top of the 1.02 multiplier: capital expenditures including debt service, pension contribution increases above 2.0%, health-care increases above 2.0% up to the State Health Benefits Program average increase, and declared-emergency costs — plus new ratables, a three-year cap bank, and a public-question override carried by more than 50%. Any municipality whose prior-year municipal purpose rate was $0.10 or less per $100 is outside the cap entirely. The school cap at N.J.S.A. 18A:7F-38 is the same 2.0% with adjustments for enrollment, health care and pension, and school DEBT SERVICE is excluded from the adjusted tax levy outright. And a second, older cap runs alongside: the 1977 appropriations cap (N.J.S.A. 40A:4-45.1a, 40A:4-45.2), whose COLA the DCA set at 2% for CY2026 with a 3.5% ordinance option, and which for counties applies to the levy rather than to appropriations. DCA states the compound requirement directly: local budgets must comply "with both the 1977 cap law and the 2010 levy cap law". What New Jersey does NOT have is an assessment-growth cap, a rate limit on the general levy, a circuit-breaker cap on the bill, or a cap on year-over-year bill growth. THE STATE DOES LEVY ONE PROPERTY TAX, contrary to the Division's own summary that "the State does not participate in the making of local budgets, nor does it receive any of the property taxes collected" — which is true of the local property tax under Title 54 chapter 4 and not of the Railroad Tax Law. N.J.A.C. 18:23-3.5 has the Director assess railroad property at $4.75 per $100 of TRUE value as of 1 January of the pretax year, and 18:23-3.1 draws the base by carve-out: everything used for railroad purposes "except main stem, tangible personal property, facilities used in passenger service, and Class II real property that transferred out of railroad ownership" mid-year. Where main stem is taxed instead is NOT resolved by this record. HOW MANY MUNICIPALITIES? THE DIVISION PUBLISHES THREE DIFFERENT ANSWERS. Its general property tax page says "566 taxing districts", its revaluation brochure says "565 municipalities", and its two certified 2025/2026 tables enumerate exactly 564 rows each across all 21 counties — the count after Pine Valley Borough merged into Pine Hill in Camden County at the start of 2022. Prefer the certified tables: the narrative pages are stale, and 564 is the number a join against either table will actually produce. WHY TAX YEAR 2025 AND NOT 2026. The 2026 Chapter 123 ratios are certified and Tax Court-amended, so the ratio side of 2026 exists — but as of 2026-08-12 the Division's statistical index still lists 2025 as the most recent General Tax Rates publication, and there is no complete 2026 rate table. A record labelled 2026 would carry certified ratios against uncertified rates, which is exactly the mismatch this corpus exists to prevent. WHAT THIS RECORD DOES NOT MODEL, NAMED SO THAT ITS ABSENCE IS NOT READ AS ITS NON-EXISTENCE. Municipal abatements and long-term exemptions with payments in lieu of taxes (N.J.S.A. 40A:21-1 et seq. and 40A:20-1 et seq.) take property out of the AGGREGATE ASSESSED VALUE the general tax rate is struck against, which raises that rate for everyone else; the volume is per-municipality and it is flagged on every county equalization table as "C.441 In Lieu Of". Special improvement district assessments are recorded as a commercial add-on with no rate for the same reason. Neither has a statewide figure and neither is derivable from the state layer. CITATION HAZARDS, FOUR OF THEM. (1) NEW JERSEY HAS NO CITABLE CODIFIED-STATUTE HOST. law.justia.com answers a plain client and a browser user-agent alike with a Cloudflare interstitial at HTTP 403, and lis.njleg.state.nj.us — which genuinely is the official N.J. Legislative Statutes — is a client-rendered Folio search application with no per-section URL and no statute text in the served body. Every statutory quotation in this record therefore comes either from the Legislature's signed chapter-law PDFs or from Division of Taxation publications that quote the sections verbatim, and the host caps mean those chapter laws are cited at tier 2 rather than as `statute`. (2) A LIVE DCA PAGE IS EIGHTEEN YEARS STALE: "Property Tax Levy Cap Administration" still sits on the Department's current resources index, still answers 200, and still says "The core of the formula is a four percent increase" and "The law is written to expire after five years (after FY 2012)" — both superseded by P.L.2010, c.44. It is cited here only for the order of operations, never for a rate. (3) THE PATH YEAR IS NOT THE DOCUMENT YEAR: the /lptval/2024/ directory holds BOTH 2024TEV.pdf and 2025TEV.pdf, and the Chapter 123 file named 2026CH123.pdf reports the 2025 roll. Read the cover page, never the URL. (4) THE LEGISLATURE'S CONSTITUTION PAGE CARRIES CURRENT TEXT UNDER A STALE AMENDMENT STAMP. Article VIII, §I, ¶3 is served with the wartime-service requirement already gone — the substance of Public Question 2 of 3 November 2020 — but stamped only "amended effective December 5, 2019", which was the unrelated continuing-care-retirement-community amendment. The page knows December 2020 as an effective date; it uses it on another paragraph. So on this host the text is evidence and the stamp is not, which inverts the usual rule and is the reason nothing in this record dates a change from that page alone.