Methodology

Rate correctness is the entire point of this site. Here is exactly how the numbers are produced — and what they do and don't include.

Rates effective July 1, 2026 (FY 2026–27) · Verified July 3, 2026

1. Rates come from official adopted schedules, by hand

Each July, when counties adopt their budgets, we hand-key every levy — county, municipal, fire district, school district, and special district — from the county's official rate schedule into a version-controlled file, with the source document recorded next to every number. Hand-keying is deliberate: these documents are PDFs meant for humans, and a human reading them (twice) beats fragile scraping.

Durham County sources:Official '2026 Tax Rates (FY 2026-2027)' sheet, Durham County Tax Administration (retrieved 2026-07-03) · Tax rates page (HTML) — matches PDF (retrieved 2026-07-03)

Orange County sources:Adopted FY2026-27 budget ordinance ORD-2026-014 (packet pp. 11-21; tax levy pp. 15-16) (retrieved 2026-07-03) · County news release corroborating the adopted 68.05-cent county rate (retrieved 2026-07-03) · FY2025-26 rate-code table (code->levy map; 2026 sheet not yet posted) (retrieved 2026-07-03) · NCPTS bill portal — 8 rate codes verified against real FY2025-26 bills (retrieved 2026-07-03)

Wake County sources:Official Wake County 'Tax Rates' sheet (2026 column = FY2026-27) (retrieved 2026-07-03) · Tax rates & fees landing page (retrieved 2026-07-03)

2. Every parcel is read from county records

We download each county's own public parcel data — 629,137parcels across Durham, Orange, Wake — including the taxing districts the county has recorded on each property. We use each county's own open-data services, never third-party aggregates. Counties model this differently: Durham and Wake tag each parcel with its city and fire district directly, while Orange stamps a single rate code that maps to a whole levy stack — we key that map from the county's rate-code sheet.

3. Zones come from levy stacks, not boundary files

A "zone" on our map is the set of parcels taxed by exactly the same governments. We group parcels by their recorded levy combination and merge their shapes. This mirrors how bills are actually computed, and it is more accurate than overlaying district boundary maps, which lag annexations and produce slivers. Across the three counties this currently resolves to67 distinct zones.

4. The math is tested against real bills

Before anything is published, an automated gate recomputes tax bills for reference parcels whose actual county bills we have verified, and fails the entire release if any figure is off by more than $2. It also cross-checks parcel counts at every pipeline stage and rejects any district code that doesn't match the official rate schedule. This catches real errors: it is how we confirmed that Orange County rate code 19 includes the Damascus fire levy even though that cell is blank on the county's own published rate sheet.

5. Known limitations

• Flat fees are mostly excluded. Rate-based taxes are shown; fixed fees (solid waste, stormwater) vary by service status. The calculator can include a county's residential solid-waste fee (Durham's $185, Orange's $138 per dwelling) as an option.
• Exemptions and deferments are not modeled. Homestead exclusions (elderly/disabled, veteran) and present-use value for farms reduce individual bills.
• Split parcels are simplified. A handful of parcels (7 in Durham County) straddle two districts and are billed pro-rata; we display their first-listed district and flag them internally.
• Assessed ≠ market value. Counties revalue on multi-year cycles (Durham and Orange most recently January 1, 2025; Wake January 1, 2024), so effective rates versus market value differ across counties.

Disclaimer

This site is an independent reference built from public records. It isnot a legal record and not affiliated with any county or municipality. Figures are estimates for comparison; confirm anything that matters with the county tax office. Found an error? Email[email protected]— corrections ship fast.

Update cadence

Full rebuild every July when new fiscal-year rates are adopted (FY 2026–27is current), plus monthly automated checks against county data for schema or boundary drift, and prompt fixes when counties publish corrections.