September 2 was the last day to file an assessment appeal for 2026 in Allegheny County. Appeals are using a Common Level Ratio (CLR) of 50.14. As of Sept. 5, there were 5,963 appeals with $3.1 billion in pre-appeal value. Most have been filed by owners and most are for residential property. Forty school districts filed 2,761 appeals. The highest assessed value is $114.4 million for an owner-appealed commercial property.
The appeal period was moved to the summer by a 2024 ordinance. This was to allow taxing bodies to anticipate the effect of appeals prior to passing a budget. 2025 appeals had to be filed Oct.1. Hearings for 2,243 appeals—about 57 percent of appeals that were heard—were concluded by the end of 2024.
In 2025, the county, 38 municipalities and 28 school districts increased property taxes.
While the appeals board gets ready to hear this group of appeals, inaction on fixing the reassessment issue persists. State legislation to mandate regular reassessments for all counties except Philadelphia sits in committee as does a County Council ordinance that would use statistical indicators to trigger reassessments in Allegheny County. Lawsuits in Common Pleas and Commonwealth courts over various aspects of the assessment system—the 2020 CLR, forcing Allegheny County to conduct a reassessment, and forcing the state to change its reassessment policy—are pending, slowly.
Maybe policymakers are looking at the number of parcels and value involved in appeals in Allegheny County (1 percent of the total number of parcels and 3 percent of total assessed value as of this week) and elsewhere and are favoring that over a countywide reassessment.
But that does not help to achieve the requirement for uniform taxation.
And there are still costs involved with appeals and lawsuits over reassessment practices, both time and money (one lawsuit has been in the courts since June 2021). Owners who initiate appeals or who defend against a taxing body appeal may have to hire an attorney, governments being sued by taxpayers or other governments to conduct a reassessment have to devote staff time or hire outside counsel and the courts get clogged up.
All of this would be solved by putting Pennsylvania on a regular cycle of reassessments.
