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Sources

Every deadline, fee, form, and evidence standard in Bracketsight lives in versioned data files with citations — nothing is hard-coded, and nothing is encoded from a blog post. When a rule changes, the data file changes, the changelog records it, and every page that uses the rule updates.

Verification status: citations marked “awaiting primary-source verification” were drafted from general knowledge of each county's process and have not yet been confirmed against the county authority. They are tracked in the project's verification log and must be confirmed before any county page is treated as filing-ready.

What makes a source primary for a county question?

The body with authority over the specific question, not the most official-looking page about the topic. A county board's own rules are primary for its filing calendar, its fee and its evidence requirements, because the board is the thing that decides them. A state statute or the state tax division is primary for a statutory test that binds every county. A state-level summary of county practice is neither: it describes what counties do, and it is out of date the session a county changes its calendar.

Cook County is the clean illustration. Its filing deadline is not an interval anyone can compute — it is a close date the Board of Review publishes for each of its 38 townships, every session. The Board's FAQ says townships are open a minimum of 30 days, which is a floor rather than the rule: in 2026 the first group opened 3 August and closed 1 September, a span of 29 days, and that same group had a separate evidence-submission deadline of 11 September. No state page can tell you any of that. Read your township's published dates.

The rule cuts the other way too. A county page is not automatically right about a state statute: Bergen County's FAQ gives $750,000 as the threshold for filing directly with the Tax Court, but that figure is the separate added-and-omitted assessment threshold — the regular valuation threshold in the Division of Taxation's handbook is $1,000,000, and that is what the engine carries.

Cook County, Illinois

Ruleset 2026-08

Bergen County, New Jersey

Ruleset 2026-08

Why are some of those links flagged?

Because a citation nobody could open is not a citation, and saying so is cheaper than pretending otherwise. Three cases are live here. The Cook County Assessor's domain has migrated, and the current host returns a bot block, so no Assessor-side value has been read from the Assessor. The Illinois Property Tax Appeal Board link did not resolve from the verification environment — unreachable, not confirmed dead. And the citation for the New Jersey deadline statute points at a bare site root rather than a deep link to the section, on a host that refuses connections; the deadline itself is verified from the Division of Taxation's assessors' handbook, so no date on this site is wrong. The citation is.

What is the Director's Ratio, and why is a New Jersey verdict withheld without it?

The Director of the Division of Taxation publishes an average ratio of assessed to true value for every municipality, every 1 April. Chapter 123 — N.J.S.A. 54:1-35a, 54:3-22(c) and 54:51A-6, set out at handbook §§1105.19–1105.20 — builds a corridor of 15% either side of that ratio, multiplied rather than added: an average ratio of 78.00% gives 66.30% to 89.70%. Your assessment divided by your home's true value is compared against it. Inside the corridor the board may grant no reduction at all. Above it, the assessment is reset to average ratio × true value. Below it, the assessment is raised to the same figure.

Every part of that rule is implemented. None of the ratios are encoded: not one municipal figure has been read from a primary source, and none is invented, so the table sits empty and every Bergen County check returns “cannot determine” naming the missing input. The alternative would be to fall back on the generic gap thresholds described on the methodology page, which bear no relationship to the test the board applies — and would tell a homeowner inside the corridor they have a strong case on an appeal the board is required by statute to deny. Bergen contains roughly 70 municipalities, each with its own ratio and its own citation requirement before the engine will accept it.

How often is each source re-checked?

  • Every 1 April: the New Jersey Chapter 123 average ratios, republished annually per municipality.
  • Every session: Cook County's township open and close calendar and its evidence deadlines, which are re-published each year and are the reason a deadline verified last year proves nothing about this one.
  • Annually: the New Jersey appeal form PDFs. Form revision codes change without notice, and two of these links were already dead when they were last checked.
  • Only on statutory change: New Jersey's filing fee tiers and the direct-to-Tax-Court threshold.

Statistical method

  • IAAO, Standard on Ratio Studies — the source of the median-ratio approach and the coefficient of dispersion, including the COD ≤ 15 residential uniformity benchmark. See the methodology page for how each statistic is applied.

What if your county is not listed?

Then Bracketsight has no rules for it, and the honest answer is that this site cannot help you file yet. Only the counties above ship. The statistical method travels — comparable homes, a median assessment ratio, a dispersion check — but the parts that decide whether an appeal is possible do not: the filing window, the fee, the evidence standard, the body you file with, and whether your state applies a statutory relief test that overrides the comparison entirely. Start at your county assessor's or board of review's own appeal page for the calendar and the fee, and check whether your state has a corridor test of its own before you read any gap figure as a case.

Demo data

The sample neighborhood (“Maplewood Heights”) is a synthetic dataset generated for demonstration. It is labelled as such everywhere it appears and is not derived from any county record. No sample parcel carries a real New Jersey municipality either, because attaching one to a fictional parcel would imply a real place.

2 counties encoded · How the verdict is reached → · Which counties are covered → · Every rule and its source →

This is an independent estimate engine. It is not your county assessor, not an appraisal and not legal or tax advice. Deadlines and fees are strict and set locally — confirm both with your county before you rely on them. Nothing you enter leaves your browser.

Pre-launch build. The estimated annual overpayment, and the filing-fee comparison the verdict is gated on, multiply through a per-county property tax rate that has not been verified against a primary source for either county — so treat the dollar figure as illustrative of the method and the ranking, not as what you would recover. Several Cook County values remain unresolved because the Assessor’s site is unreachable from the verification environment, and a New Jersey verdict is withheld entirely when the governing Director’s Ratio is unavailable, which today is every New Jersey municipality. What is verified and what is not is listed on sources.