Florida property tax answers · Updated July 2026
When is the Florida VAB petition deadline?
The short answer
Your Florida VAB petition is due 25 days after your county property appraiser mails the TRIM notice, per Florida Statute 194.011. TRIM notices must be mailed in August (Statute 200.069), most counties mail mid-to-late August, so most 2026 petition deadlines fall in September. The deadline is county-specific and receive-by: the Clerk of Court must have your DR-486 in hand, a postmark does not count.
Why there is no single statewide date
Florida ties the appeal deadline to each county's TRIM mailing date, not to a fixed calendar day. Statute 200.069 requires property appraisers to mail TRIM notices in August, and Statute 194.011 opens a 25-day petition window from that mailing date. Counties mail on different days, so Miami-Dade's deadline is not Broward's, and neither is the Panhandle's. Most counties mail in mid-to-late August, which puts most petition deadlines in the first half of September.
Your exact deadline is printed on your TRIM notice itself, and our Florida county pages list each county's approximate TRIM mailing and petition dates for 2026, along with the property appraiser and VAB filing links.
The three rules that catch people
- Receive-by, not postmark. The Clerk of Court must physically or electronically receive the petition within the 25 days. Mailing it on the last day misses the deadline.
- The window opens at mailing, not at delivery. If your notice sat in the mailbox a week, that week is gone. The 25 days run from the county's mailing date.
- Missing the window generally forfeits the year. Florida has narrow good-cause exceptions, but for practical purposes the VAB window is the appeal. There is no Texas-style late-correction fallback for ordinary over-assessment.
The play: know your case in July, file in August
Twenty-five days is enough time to sign a pre-built petition, and not much more. It is a tight window to start from zero: pull comparables, learn the form, find your county's filing portal. The homeowners who win are the ones who checked early. The free check compares your assessment against similar homes from the state roll in about 30 seconds, any time of year, and if the gap is real the $49 kit arrives with the DR-486 pre-filled so filing takes minutes, not the whole window.
Don't start the clock at zero
Check your address free now, before TRIM notices mail. If your home shows over-assessed, the $49 kit arrives with Form DR-486 pre-filled, the comparable evidence attached, and your county's exact filing route, so when your notice lands you file in minutes and keep 100% of the savings.
Check my Florida address · FreeFlat $49, one time, no contingency. Every county's approximate 2026 dates are on our Florida county pages.