Florida TRIM notice deadline is 25 days from mailing — and your petition must be RECEIVED, not just postmarked. Complete guide to Florida's VAB appeal deadline, county timelines, and how to file fast.
TRIM stands for Truth in Millage. Every August, Florida's 67 county property appraisers mail TRIM notices to all property owners. The TRIM notice shows your property's assessed value, all applicable exemptions, your taxable value, and an estimate of your property tax bill based on proposed millage rates from all taxing jurisdictions. The TRIM notice is not your tax bill — it is a proposed assessment that you have the right to challenge. The date your TRIM notice is mailed starts the 25-day countdown to your petition deadline.
Under Florida Statute § 194.011, you have 25 days from the date the property appraiser mails your TRIM notice to file a petition with your county Value Adjustment Board. Florida TRIM notices are typically mailed in mid-to-late August, making most VAB petition deadlines fall in mid-September. The 25-day window is among the shortest property tax appeal periods of any state in the country. With mail delivery times, document preparation, and processing, waiting until the last week is dangerous.
This is the rule that surprises most Florida homeowners: Florida law requires your VAB petition to be physically received by the Value Adjustment Board by the 25-day deadline. This is fundamentally different from states like Texas and Georgia, where a timely postmark is sufficient. In Florida, if you mail your petition on September 15 (the deadline) and it arrives September 16, it is late. Period. No exceptions. This is why you should mail your petition the day it's ready — or hand-deliver it to the VAB — and keep a dated record that it was sent.
Each Florida county property appraiser sets their own TRIM mailing date, which determines your specific petition deadline. While most fall in mid-September, verify your exact deadline on your TRIM notice.
Before you decide whether to petition, review your TRIM notice carefully. The key figures to evaluate are your just/market value (the property appraiser's estimate of your home's worth) and your assessed value (which may be lower due to Save Our Homes cap). Compare your just value to recent sales of comparable homes in your area. If similar homes have sold for materially less than your just value, you have a strong petition.
If your deadline is approaching, here is what to do: enter your property address at TaxAppeal and we check whether a petition will lower your bill after Save Our Homes and your exemptions. If it will, pay $89 and we prepare your DR-486 with comparable values. Close to the deadline there isn't time to mail a printed kit, so we email it to you as a PDF to print, sign and deliver. Florida counts a petition when it is received, so hand-deliver it to the VAB if time is short, with a cheque for the county's filing fee (paid by you, to the county). If the VAB schedules a hearing, dealing with it is your decision — we are not your representative.
We check first. If an appeal will lower your bill, we mail you a ready-to-sign kit for $89 flat. You sign it and mail it, and you keep 100% of your savings.
TaxAppeal USA is a self-service document-preparation service. We prepare a ready-to-sign appeal kit and mail it to you; you sign it and mail it to the county yourself. In every state we serve, including Florida, we are not property tax consultants, agents, or representatives, we do not provide tax or legal advice, and we do not file appeals or represent customers before any appraisal district, board of assessors, board of equalization, value adjustment board, or review board. Every appeal, protest and petition is prepared for the property owner, signed by the owner, and mailed by the owner in the owner’s name. In Florida your petition is signed by you as the property owner under section 194.011(3), Florida Statutes, and the county’s Value Adjustment Board filing fee is paid by you directly to the county. TaxAppeal USA does not sign as your representative, does not appear before the Board, and does not present evidence or argument at a hearing.