To find out how much you paid in property taxes, start with the source that handled the payment. If a mortgage servicer pays your taxes from an escrow account, your annual escrow statement shows the exact amount sent to the taxing authority. If you pay the county directly, your tax collector’s online portal has a payment history for your parcel. If you bought or sold the home during the year, your closing disclosure shows the prorated share you owed. And if none of those give you a clean number, the local tax office can pull the record for you.
Gather a Few Details Before You Search
Government databases and mortgage servicers identify your account by specific fields, and searching without them wastes time. The most useful is your Assessor’s Parcel Number, sometimes called a Parcel ID — a unique number the local assessor assigns to your property for tax records.1Legal Information Institute. Assessor’s Parcel Number The APN is not the legal description on your deed. You’ll usually find it on a previous tax bill or in the summary section of your recorded deed.
Have the street address and the owner’s full legal name as recorded, too. Name searches in municipal databases are literal: a missing middle initial or an abbreviated street name can return nothing.
Check Your Mortgage Escrow Statement
If your mortgage includes escrow, your servicer collects a slice of the estimated tax bill each month and pays the county for you. Federal rules require the servicer to send an annual escrow account statement itemizing every disbursement for taxes, insurance, and other charges, and to send it within 30 days of the end of your escrow computation year.2Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 12 CFR 1024.17 – Escrow Accounts The line showing what went to your taxing authority is the number you want.
You may also see property taxes on Form 1098, the mortgage interest statement that arrives by January 31. Reporting the tax amount in Box 10 of that form is optional, so some servicers include it and some do not.3Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 1098 When Box 10 is blank, use the escrow statement or the disbursement history in your servicer’s online portal.
One point matters for tax filing: the deductible amount is what your servicer actually paid to the taxing authority, not what you paid into escrow during the year. Those figures often differ because escrow accounts hold reserves and adjust over time.4Internal Revenue Service. Publication 530 – Tax Information for Homeowners
Look Up Your Account on the County Tax Collector’s Website
Almost every county and city tax collector runs an online portal where you can search by parcel ID or address. Once you find your account, look for a tab called something like “Tax Bill History” or “Payment Status.” The ledger typically shows the original levy, any exemptions, the amount paid, and the confirmation date, often several years back.
Watch how your local government defines its tax year. Many jurisdictions run on a fiscal year such as July through June rather than a calendar year, so a calendar year’s payments can span two different bills. Most portals let you download a PDF of the paid bill with a zero-balance confirmation. Those bills also show where the money went: school district, library fund, road maintenance, and other local services.
Review Your Closing Disclosure If You Bought or Sold That Year
When a property changes hands, the annual tax bill gets split between buyer and seller at closing. The Closing Disclosure — or the older HUD-1 Settlement Statement for transactions before October 2015 — shows exactly what each party owed. The section covering prorations and adjustments has the dollar amounts credited or debited for property taxes, usually broken out by county, municipal, and school levies.
These prorated amounts count toward your tax liability for the year but often will not appear on the county’s year-end payment records. If the seller prepaid the full year and you reimbursed a portion at closing, that reimbursement is part of your total for the year. You should have received the Closing Disclosure from the title company or the attorney who handled closing.
One thing to watch for after a purchase: some states issue a supplemental tax bill several months after the sale, reflecting the gap between the property’s old assessed value and its new one. Mortgage servicers generally do not pay supplemental bills from escrow. If you bought recently and have not seen one, ask the county assessor whether one is pending.
Ask the Tax Office Directly
When online records are incomplete or missing, calling or visiting the tax collector’s office is a reliable backup. Give them your parcel ID or address, and a clerk can pull your payment history from the internal ledger. This is the best route for confirming manual adjustments, late payments, or anything that has not yet posted online.
Some offices charge a small fee for a certified copy of your payment history or a formal tax certification on government letterhead. Fees vary, so ask first. Certified records carry more weight than a website printout if you ever need proof of payment for a legal dispute or an estate matter. Expect delivery by mail or secure email within a few business days.
How Much of What You Paid Is Deductible
Knowing the payment total is only half the answer at tax time. For 2026, the combined state and local tax deduction — property taxes plus either state income tax or state sales tax, not both — is capped at $40,400 for most filers and $20,200 for married filing separately.5Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 503 – Deductible Taxes The cap phases down for taxpayers with modified adjusted gross income above $505,000, with a floor of $10,000. You have to itemize on Schedule A to claim it.
Several charges that appear on a typical property tax bill are not deductible as property taxes:
- Service fees for water, sewer, or trash collection, even when the taxing authority bills them.
- Local benefit assessments for improvements that raise your property’s value, such as new sidewalks or sewer line construction. Assessments for maintenance or repair of existing infrastructure can be deducted.
- Homeowners’ association dues, because a private association imposes them rather than a government.
- Stamp taxes and other transfer charges paid when a property is bought or sold.
Read the bill line by line and separate the ad valorem tax from these other charges before you put a figure on your return.4Internal Revenue Service. Publication 530 – Tax Information for Homeowners
What to Do If the Numbers Don’t Match
If your servicer’s disbursement figure differs from the county’s record, or if your servicer failed to pay at all, federal regulations treat a missed escrow tax payment as an error that triggers a formal resolution process.6eCFR. 12 CFR 1024.35 – Error Resolution Procedures Send your servicer a written notice identifying your loan and describing the problem. The servicer has five business days to acknowledge it and 30 business days to either fix the error or explain why it thinks there isn’t one, with a possible 15-day extension. During the first 60 days after you send the notice, the servicer cannot report negative information about the disputed payment to the credit bureaus.
If you paid the county directly and think you were overcharged — wrong assessment, duplicate payment, an exemption that never got applied — contact the assessor’s office to request a correction. Refund procedures vary, but the assessor generally has to certify that the original assessment was wrong before the collector can issue a refund. Keep every receipt and every piece of correspondence, because some jurisdictions handle voluntary overpayments differently from overpayments caused by an assessment error. Unpaid property taxes pick up penalties and interest that vary widely by location, and long nonpayment can lead to a tax lien, so it pays to resolve any discrepancy sooner rather than later.