New Deadline for Allegheny County Property Assessment Appeals Set for October 1, 2024

The deadline for property assessment appeals in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania for the 2025 tax year has been moved up to October 1, 2024, from March 31, 2025. This new deadline aims to streamline the process, enabling appeals to be resolved within 90 days, thereby reducing financial uncertainty for both municipalities and property owners.

This change, enacted through an amendment to Article 210 of the Administrative Code of Allegheny County, seeks to provide greater budgetary certainty for municipalities by allowing the resolution of appeals before the certification of the tax rolls. While a good idea in theory, as numerous commercial property appeals are filed to the court level after a Board of Property Assessments and Appeal Review (BPAAR) decision is issued seeking additional tax relief, the economic uncertainty related to refunds or additional tax revenue (from school district appeals for increase) will continue to be a factor. As the Allegheny County equalization ratio for the 2025 tax year decreased from 2024 (54.5 to 52.7%), this will cause all the equalized fair market values to increase by 3.4%.

A suggestion for both revenue and property value transparency would be to implement a regular reassessment process. Discarding the antiquated equalization ratio system and reassessing one-third of the county every three years (as they do in Maryland for example) would provide greater certainty to the taxing jurisdictions on their annual revenue and make the county a more business-friendly environment. As assessed values would remain close to their market values, tax changes from appeals (for decrease or increase) would be much less extreme.

Because of Allegheny’s equalization ratio decline, the local experts at Ryan anticipate another increase in property values for many owners in 2025. The Ryan team has extensive experience performing assessment reviews, assisting with tax estimates, and preparing and presenting cases to local county Boards of Assessment across Pennsylvania.