Multi-state coverage
Property tax filing, state by state
Business personal property deadlines are set by statute, vary by state and sometimes by county, and cannot be extended after they pass. North Carolina closes on January 31; Nevada does not open until July. CPT files in every state that levies the tax and manages that calendar for you. The dates below were verified against state government sources for the 2026 filing season.
Earliest deadline
January 31
North Carolina and Rhode Island, before most companies have closed the prior year.
No general BPP tax
10 states
And not one of them is a clean exemption — utility, pipeline, and telecom property is still taxed.
No extension available
Several
Tennessee is explicit that no one has the authority to grant one. Kentucky and Oregon provide none.
Assessment dates and filing deadlines
Every date below was confirmed against a state government source — a department of revenue or taxation, a state tax commission, or the statute itself. States whose deadline is genuinely set locally, or where government sources disagree, are listed further down and described rather than dated. We would rather tell you it depends than print a date you could rely on and miss.
| State | Assessment date | Return due | What trips people up |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | January 1 | April 1 | Form BOE-571-L. Due April 1, but a statement filed by May 7 is still timely and avoids the 10% late penalty. The two dates are legally distinct. |
| Colorado | January 1 | April 15 | Declaration schedule to the county assessor. Extensions of 10 or 20 days are available for a fee if requested before the deadline. |
| Connecticut | October 1 | November 1 | Filed with the municipal assessor — Connecticut has no county government. The assessor may extend up to 45 days for good cause. Late or omitted property carries a 25% penalty on the assessment. |
| District of Columbia | July 1 | July 31 | Form FP-31, filed electronically. DC runs a July–June personal property tax year, so the assessment date and the deadline fall in the same month. A return is required even when no tax is due. |
| Florida | January 1 | April 1 | Form DR-405 to the county property appraiser. The appraiser must grant a 30-day extension if you request it before April 1. The $25,000 exemption requires a timely return — filing late forfeits it. |
| Indiana | January 1 | May 15 | Written extensions of up to 30 days available. The exemption threshold rose sharply for the 2026 assessment date, but a return is still required. |
| Kentucky | January 1 | May 15 | Form 62A500 filed with the local PVA — a separate return for each property location. No extensions. The state no longer mails filing reminders. |
| Maryland | January 1 | April 15 | Filed with SDAT, not the counties. A free 60-day extension is available but must be requested online by April 15; paper requests are not accepted. |
| Massachusetts | January 1 | March 1 | The Form of List, filed with the local board of assessors. Assessors may extend for cause shown. Failing to file bars an overvaluation abatement in most circumstances. |
| Michigan | December 31 (prior year) | February 20 | Michigan measures taxable status as of Tax Day — December 31 of the preceding year, not January 1. Postmark is accepted. See the Michigan section below. |
| Missouri | January 1 | March 1 | March 1 generally, but merchants, manufacturers, railroads, utilities, and pipeline companies file by April 1 instead. Penalties are graduated by assessed value. |
| Montana | January 1 | February 15 | Not March 1, which is still widely and wrongly cited. Reported to the state, not a county. Late or incomplete reporting carries a 20% penalty, and fully depreciated property is still reportable. |
| Nebraska | January 1 | May 1 | Filed with the county assessor in every county where property sits. Nebraska has no de minimis exemption — it was repealed effective 2020, though the state’s own return form still describes it. |
| Nevada | July 1 | July 31 | Statutory date, but the declaration is demanded on each county assessor’s own form and schedule, and 30-day extensions are available on petition. Nevada’s de minimis is a tax-bill amount, not a value threshold. |
| New Mexico | January 1 | Last day of February | Report once, not annually — property need not be re-reported in later years unless it leaves and returns. This regime is unusual and is frequently mishandled as an annual filing. |
| North Carolina | January 1 | January 31 | The earliest general deadline in the country. Individual extensions are available on written request to April 15, or to June 1 in counties with electronic listing. No de minimis threshold. |
| Oklahoma | January 1 | March 15 | Form 901 to the county assessor. Penalty is 10% of assessed valuation after March 15 and 20% after April 15. Freeport inventory exemption shares the deadline. |
| Oregon | January 1 | March 15 | No extensions exist. Penalties escalate from 5% to 25% to 50% depending on how late the return is, so a missed deadline is worth curing immediately rather than at year end. |
| Rhode Island | December 31 (prior year) | January 31 | Filed with the local municipal assessor; forms and fiscal years vary by city and town. An extension to March 15 is available if written notice is filed by January 31. The filing obligation applies even where the exemption means no tax results. |
| South Carolina | Close of your accounting period | Last day of the 4th month after | Tied to your own tax year rather than a fixed statewide date — April 30 for calendar-year filers. No extensions. Manufacturers file PT-300; most others file PT-100, and the filing office is migrating from counties to the state. |
| Tennessee | January 1 | March 1 | Schedule B to the county assessor. No one has authority to grant an extension. Failure to file produces a forced assessment; timely-filed schedules can be amended until September 1 of the following year. |
| Texas | January 1 | April 15 | Rendition to the county appraisal district. On written request the chief appraiser must extend to May 15, and may extend a further 15 days for good cause. Penalty is 10% of the tax, and 50% more where a court finds intent to evade. |
| Utah | January 1 | May 15 | If the assessor requests the statement on or after March 16, you have 60 days from that request. Penalty is 10% of estimated tax due, with a minimum. |
| Washington | January 1 | April 30 | Listed with the county assessor. Not receiving a form does not excuse the obligation to file. |
| West Virginia | July 1 (prior year) | September 1 (prior year) | The assessment date and deadline both fall in the calendar year before the tax year — the 2026 return was due September 1, 2025. Industrial property files a different form with the state rather than the county. |
| Wyoming | January 1 | March 1 | The assessor must extend to April 1 on written request made by February 15. Failure to list means assessment from the best available information, plus daily penalties. |
Verified against state primary sources for the 2026 filing season, August 2026. Deadlines change, and a date falling on a weekend or holiday may roll to the next business day in some states but not others. Confirm the current-year date before relying on it.
Where one date would be misleading
In these states the deadline is set below the state level, so any single published date is wrong somewhere. This is exactly the category where companies file on time by the number they found online and are still late.
Alaska
No statewide property tax. Each borough decides, and they differ: Anchorage files April 30, Kenai Peninsula February 15, Juneau exempts personal property entirely.
Louisiana
Form LAT-5 to the parish assessor, due April 1 or 45 days after you receive the form, whichever is later. The "whichever is later" clause is load-bearing and parish practice varies.
Maine
Assessment date is April 1, not January 1. Each municipal assessor sets the filing date; you generally have 30 days from notice. Failing to file a true and perfect list bars appeal that year.
Vermont
Municipal option, and the default is taxable — towns vote to stop taxing, they do not opt in. Where taxed, forms go out April 1 and are returned April 20.
Virginia
Assessed entirely at the city and county level. May 1 is the statutory default only, and localities routinely set their own dates, rates, depreciation schedules, and penalties by ordinance.
Confirmed enough to plan around, not enough to print as gospel
- Alabama — October 1 lien date, filed October through December 31.
- Arizona — April 1, though the valuation date is not cleanly settled between sources.
- Arkansas — Window from January 1 to May 31, with a 10% late penalty.
- Georgia — April 1 in most counties — the state itself says January 1 and April 1 "unless otherwise indicated," so counties can deviate.
- Idaho — March 15, with a per-taxpayer per-county exemption that removes many filers.
- Kansas — March 15. Government sources genuinely conflict on whether an unchanged taxpayer must still file annually — some counties say a 2024 change ended it, others still require it.
- Mississippi — April 1 under the statute and regulation, filed with the county tax assessor.
States with no general business personal property tax
Worth knowing in both directions. Companies file returns they never owed, and they also assume an exemption that does not cover what they actually own. Read the caveat on each one — none of these is a blanket exemption.
Delaware
No county or political subdivision may levy any tax on personal property. Delaware does levy a gross receipts tax, so this is not "no business tax."
Minnesota
Exempt except utility and pipeline systems, railroad docks, manufactured homes, airline flight property, and certain leasehold interests.
New Hampshire
No general provision exists, but electric plants, pipelines, and telecom poles and conduits are taxable.
New Jersey
Taxable personal property is limited to petroleum refinery machinery and local exchange telephone property. The real exposure is the fixture test, which converts equipment into taxable real property.
New York
Personal property is not liable to ad valorem taxation — but boilers, elevators, ventilating, plumbing, heating, lighting, and power-generating apparatus are reclassified as real property. The question is never whether your equipment is exempt; it is whether it has been reclassified.
North Dakota
Exempt except centrally assessed non-railroad property and classes taxed under other law. Drilling rigs are expressly not exempt.
Ohio
Phased to zero for tax year 2009 and after, replaced by the Commercial Activity Tax. Public utility personal property is still taxed, at rates by utility type.
Pennsylvania
No tax on tangible business personal property anywhere in the Commonwealth. Telecommunications towers are expressly taxable as real estate.
South Dakota
Exempt where not centrally assessed. Railroads, airlines, pipelines, investor-owned power, and long-distance telecom remain fully taxable.
Wisconsin
Exempt from the 2024 assessment under 2023 Act 12. Not a clean win for everyone — buildings, improvements, and fixtures on leased land are now assessed as real property instead.
Also generally understood to impose none
- Hawaii — Counties levy real property tax only.
- Illinois — The ad valorem personal property tax was abolished by constitutional amendment — but replaced by the Personal Property Replacement Tax on business income, which is very much live.
- Iowa — Personal property tax eliminated; a utility replacement tax is reported to remain.
Seven things widely believed and wrong
Each of these appears in published summaries, in AI-generated answers, and in at least one case on a state’s own unrevised form. Each one has cost a taxpayer money.
Kansas does not tax business equipment.
Kansas exempts commercial and industrial machinery and equipment acquired after June 30, 2006. Two decades on that covers most equipment, which is why the state gets miscounted — but pre-July-2006 equipment is still taxable, the per-item de minimis is small, and renewable electric generation facilities are expressly excluded.
New Mexico exempts business personal property.
The general rule says so, but a carve-out makes property taxable where the owner claimed federal depreciation on it in the preceding twelve months. Since virtually all business equipment is depreciated, the carve-out swallows the rule. What New Mexico genuinely exempts is inventory and supplies.
Vermont towns have to opt in to tax personal property.
The opposite. The default is taxable, and a municipality must affirmatively vote not to tax business personal property — optionally phasing it out over as long as ten years. Assuming exemption because you have not heard otherwise is the error.
Alaska has no property tax.
There is no statewide property tax, but boroughs may tax personal property and several do. Exemption is an affirmative local choice, not the baseline. Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula Borough both tax it.
West Virginia eliminated its business personal property tax.
The 2022 ballot amendment that would have done so was defeated. West Virginia still fully taxes business tangible personal property and inventory. What followed was a refundable income tax credit for a portion of the tax paid, capped by the size of the taxpayer — which does very little for a large manufacturer.
Nebraska exempts the first $10,000 of value.
It did, until that exemption was repealed effective 2020. Nebraska now has no de minimis exemption at all. The trap is that the state’s own personal property return form has not been revised and still describes the repealed exemption in its instructions.
Twelve states exempt all business personal property.
That figure predates Wisconsin’s 2023 exemption and is now out of date wherever it still appears. More importantly, none of these states is a clean "no" — every one of them still taxes utility, pipeline, telecom, or railroad property, and several reclassify equipment as real property instead of exempting it.
Michigan in detail
Our office is in Grand Blanc, and Michigan is where we file most often. Two features of Michigan practice catch out-of-state filers and in-state filers alike.
First, Michigan does not use January 1. Taxable status is measured as of Tax Day, December 31 of the preceding year, so what you owned on New Year’s Eve is what you report. Second, the small business exemption has two tiers with different filing burdens: under $80,000 in true cash value you claim it once and it persists, but between $80,000 and $180,000 you must file the claim and the personal property statementevery year. The $180,000 test also counts property you lease or merely possess, not only what you own — which is how companies discover they were never eligible.
Michigan filing calendar
| Form | Purpose | Due |
|---|---|---|
| Form 632 (L-4175) | Personal Property Statement | February 20 |
| Form 5076 | Small Business Property Tax Exemption Claim | February 20 |
| Form 5278 | Eligible Manufacturing Personal Property combined document | February 20 |
| Form 2699 (L-4143) | Qualified Personal Property statement | February 1 |
| Form 3828 | Air pollution control exemption application | June 15 |
| Form 1012 | Industrial Facilities Exemption certificate application | October 31 |
Appealing to the Michigan Tax Tribunal
| Classification | Petition by | Board of review first? |
|---|---|---|
| Commercial real, industrial real, developmental real | May 31 | Not required — may go directly to the Tribunal |
| Commercial, industrial, and utility personal | May 31 | Not required, but only if a personal property statement was filed before the board of review convened |
| Residential real, agricultural real, agricultural personal | July 31 | Required — protest to the March board of review is jurisdictional |
Note the conditional on personal property: the direct route to the Tribunal is available only if a personal property statement was filed before the board of review convened. Missing the February 20 filing costs you the appeal path as well as the exemption.
Abatements — apply before you break ground
Michigan’s industrial facilities exemption abates roughly half the local millage on a qualifying new facility for a term of up to twelve years. The district must be established before construction starts, and the application must be filed within six months of construction commencing — file later and the certificate amount is reduced. Applications reaching the State Tax Commission by October 31 are acted on that year.
Abatements & incentives →Pollution control — the State Tax Commission issues it
Michigan grants a 100% property and sales tax exemption for qualifying air and water pollution control facilities. The environmental agency makes the technical determination, but the State Tax Commission issues the certificate — a distinction companies routinely get wrong. Applications are due June 15, and a request for more information must be answered within 30 days or the application can be treated as withdrawn.
Pollution control exemption →Multi-state questions
Which states have no business personal property tax?
Ten states impose no general tax on business personal property: Delaware, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Hawaii, Illinois, and Iowa are generally understood to belong on that list as well. None of them is a clean exemption — every one still taxes utility, pipeline, telecom, or railroad property, and several reclassify equipment as real property rather than exempting it.
What is the earliest personal property filing deadline in the country?
North Carolina, at January 31. Rhode Island shares that date. Montana follows on February 15 and Michigan on February 20. For a company filing in multiple states, that compressed January-to-March window is where most compliance failures happen — the returns come due before the prior year’s books are closed.
Can a personal property filing deadline be extended?
It depends entirely on the state. Maryland, Texas, Colorado, Rhode Island, Wyoming, and North Carolina all provide a formal extension mechanism, though each has its own request procedure and cutoff. Tennessee, Kentucky, and Oregon provide none at all — Tennessee is explicit that no one has authority to grant one. Assuming an extension exists is an expensive way to find out it does not.
Do we have to file in a state where we only store equipment?
Usually yes. The filing obligation follows the physical presence of taxable property on the assessment date, not where the business is headquartered or incorporated. Equipment in a leased warehouse, tooling at a contract manufacturer, or a trailer parked in another state can each create a return obligation in that jurisdiction.
One calendar instead of thirty.
Tell us which states you hold property in. We will map your filing obligations, flag the deadlines that are closest, and tell you where you are filing somewhere you never had to.