Editorial Standards

Our Editorial Mission

TaxByCounty is a data-journalism site. Our job is to take the property tax statistics that the federal government already publishes — effective rates, median tax bills, home values — and present them in a form that someone planning a move, comparing places to live, or researching local tax policy can actually use. We are not a tax-advisory service. We do not prepare tax returns, provide legal advice, or recommend specific financial products.

Every page on this site is grounded in a primary-source dataset from a U.S. government agency. Where we compute composite scores or rank counties, we publish the underlying formula on our methodology page. Where we draw on AI assistance for prose, we say so on this page and on the page itself.

Who Writes and Edits This Site

TaxByCounty is published and edited by Logan Johnson, Founder & Data Editor. Logan designs the data pipeline, sets the methodology, reviews published prose for accuracy against the underlying data, and signs off on every methodology change. Logan is not a CPA, tax attorney, or licensed financial advisor, and TaxByCounty does not present itself as a tax-advisory resource. Logan's role is the data-editor role: ensure statistics on this site match the source datasets, ensure prose stays inside what the data supports, and decline to publish anything that strays into financial-advice territory.

Long-form features and reported pieces carry an explicit byline at the top of the article. Until we have a contract domain reviewer in place, Logan reviews and signs off on every long-form piece himself. We are actively recruiting a CPA, enrolled agent, or property-tax appraiser to co-byline future tax-decision features — if you have those credentials and want to write here, email logan@taxbycounty.com.

Where Our Data Comes From

All county-level statistics on this site come from primary government sources. We do not republish data from third-party aggregators. Our active source is:

• U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) — 5-Year Estimates (2019-2023). Provides median property tax paid, median home value, and derived effective tax rates for every U.S. county and county equivalent. We use the most recent 5-year release available.

Each source's URL, release date, and pull date are documented on the methodology page. Source datasets are in the public domain (federal works) and published under licenses permitting commercial redistribution with attribution.

How We Use AI

Per-county pages on this site include a short, AI-generated narrative summary that contextualizes the statistics for that county. The narrative is produced by Claude (Anthropic) from the same source data shown in the statistics tables on the page. Logan, as Data Editor, reviews the underlying prompt and spot-checks output before publication; the prompt is constrained to forbid causation claims, financial advice, and any prose that goes beyond what the source statistics support.

We do not use AI to:

• Generate tax advice, financial recommendations, or legal guidance.
• Invent statistics, sources, or quotes.
• Write methodology, editorial standards, or correction notices.
• Generate cause-and-effect claims about tax policy that aren't grounded in the source data.

When the underlying data is updated, narratives are regenerated to stay consistent. AI-generated prose is always paired with the source statistics so readers can verify the numbers themselves.

Corrections Policy

If you spot a factual error — a wrong statistic, a misattributed source, a broken citation, an outdated rate — email logan@taxbycounty.com with the page URL and the specific issue. We aim to acknowledge every report within five business days and to publish a correction or update the page within ten business days for substantive issues.

Substantive corrections (changes to a statistic, methodology, or claim) are noted in a "Corrections" entry on the page itself with the date of the correction and a short description of what changed. Typographical and formatting fixes are made silently.

How TaxByCounty Is Funded

TaxByCounty is independently owned and operated. It is part of the ByCounty Network of data sites. Funding comes from two transparent sources:

• Display advertising served by Google AdSense and similar networks. Ad placements are clearly labeled and do not influence editorial decisions or which counties we rank where.
• Affiliate links, currently limited to property-tax appeal and assessment services. Affiliate links are labeled "Sponsored" and never determine which counties we feature on data pages.

We do not accept paid content, sponsored statistics, or advertorials. No data source, advertiser, or affiliate has any influence over the methodology, rankings, or editorial choices on this site.

Update Cadence

Underlying data is refreshed annually, on the release schedule of each source (Census ACS 5-Year Estimates release in December). Narratives are regenerated when the underlying data for a county changes. The methodology page displays its own "Last reviewed" date and changelog. This editorial-standards page was last reviewed on May 17, 2026.