April 1, or May 1 if your town revalued. How to tell which one applies to you

New Jersey property tax appeals run on a hard deadline, and unlike a lot of tax matters, there is no extension for forgetting. Miss it, and your only option is to wait for next year.

The default deadline: April 1

In a typical year, a New Jersey property tax appeal must be filed with your County Board of Taxation by April 1. That's the date for the vast majority of towns and the vast majority of years. If your municipality didn't revalue or reassess this year, this is your deadline. Mark it down and don't assume it moves.

The exception: May 1

The date shifts to May 1 only when your municipality implemented a district-wide revaluation or reassessment for the current tax year. The logic is straightforward: when a town reassesses everything at once, assessment notices often go out later than usual, so the state gives homeowners an extra month to react to numbers they may have only just seen.

This is exactly why "six signs your town is about to revalue" matters practically, not just academically — if your town went through a reval this year, you are very likely on the May 1 track, and assuming April 1 could mean filing later than necessary, or worse, misreading a notice and filing too early with incomplete information.

How to tell which one is yours

Three ways to check, in order of reliability:

• Look at your assessment notice. Every year, New Jersey property owners receive a postcard or notice (often called a "Chapter 75" notice or an assessment notification) stating that year's assessed value. If yours arrived later than usual, or explicitly mentions a revaluation or reassessment program, you are almost certainly on the May 1 deadline.
• Call your municipal tax assessor's office. They will know immediately whether the town conducted a reval or reassessment this cycle. This is the single fastest way to get a definitive answer.
• Check your county tax board's appeal instructions. Counties post the correct deadline for each municipality under their jurisdiction for the current tax year, since a single county can have some towns on April 1 and others on May 1 in the same year if only some of them revalued.

Where to file, and one bigger number to know

Most appeals go to the County Board of Taxation. If your home's assessed value exceeds $1,000,000, you have the option to file directly with the NJ Tax Court instead, bypassing the county board, though this is a more formal process typically involving an attorney.

Whichever deadline applies, the appeal itself needs to stand on the same footing described in how equalization ratios work: your case isn't "my house isn't worth this," it's "my assessment-to-value ratio is out of line with my town's average," backed by comparable sales or your own recent purchase price.