Editorial Standards

Our Editorial Mission

PropertyTaxByZip is a data-journalism site. Our job is to take the property-tax statistics that the federal government already publishes — median taxes paid, median home values, effective rates — and present them in a form that someone planning a move, comparing neighborhoods, or researching housing costs can actually use. We are not a tax-advisory service. We do not prepare returns, recommend strategies, or give personalized tax advice.

Every page on this site is grounded in a primary-source dataset from a U.S. government agency. Where we compute derived metrics such as effective tax rates, we publish the underlying formula on our methodology page. Where we draw on AI assistance for prose, we say so on this page and on the page itself.

Who Writes and Edits This Site

PropertyTaxByZip is published and edited by Logan Johnson, Founder & Data Editor. Logan designs the data pipeline, sets the methodology, reviews published prose for accuracy against the underlying data, and signs off on every methodology change. Logan is not a CPA, tax attorney, or licensed tax professional, and PropertyTaxByZip does not present itself as a tax-advisory service. Logan's role is the data-editor role: ensure statistics on this site match the source datasets, ensure prose stays inside what the data supports, and decline to publish anything that strays into personalized tax advice.

Long-form features and reported pieces carry an explicit byline at the top of the article. Until we have a contract domain reviewer in place, Logan reviews and signs off on every long-form piece himself. We are actively recruiting a CPA, tax attorney, or property-tax appraiser to co-byline future tax-decision features — if you have those credentials and want to write here, email logan@propertytaxbyzip.com.

Where Our Data Comes From

All ZIP-code-level statistics on this site come from primary government sources. We do not republish data from third-party aggregators. Our active source is:

• U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey (ACS) — 2019-2023 5-Year Estimates at the ZIP Code Tabulation Area (ZCTA) level. Provides median real estate taxes paid, median home value, and household income for nearly 30,000 ZCTAs across the United States.

Each source's URL, release date, and pull date are documented on the methodology page. Census data is in the public domain (federal works).

How We Use AI

Per-ZIP pages on this site include a short, AI-generated narrative summary that contextualizes the statistics for that ZIP code. The narrative is produced by Claude (Anthropic) from the same source data shown in the statistics tables on the page. Logan, as Data Editor, reviews the underlying prompt and spot-checks output before publication; the prompt is constrained to forbid causation claims, tax-strategy recommendations, and any prose that goes beyond what the source statistics support.

We do not use AI to:

• Generate tax advice, strategy recommendations, or filing guidance.
• Invent statistics, sources, or quotes.
• Write methodology, editorial standards, or correction notices.
• Generate cause-and-effect claims about tax outcomes that aren't grounded in the source data.

When the underlying data is updated, narratives are regenerated to stay consistent. AI-generated prose is always paired with the source statistics so readers can verify the numbers themselves.

Corrections Policy

If you spot a factual error — a wrong statistic, a misattributed source, a broken citation, an outdated value — email logan@propertytaxbyzip.com with the page URL and the specific issue. We aim to acknowledge every report within five business days and to publish a correction or update the page within ten business days for substantive issues.

Substantive corrections (changes to a statistic, methodology, or claim) are noted in a “Corrections” entry on the page itself with the date of the correction and a short description of what changed. Typographical and formatting fixes are made silently.

How PropertyTaxByZip Is Funded

PropertyTaxByZip is independently owned and operated. It is part of the ByCounty Network of data sites. Funding comes from two transparent sources:

• Display advertising served by Google AdSense and similar networks. Ad placements are clearly labeled and do not influence editorial decisions or which ZIP codes we rank where.
• Affiliate links, currently limited to mortgage-lender and property-tax appeal service referrals. Affiliate links are labeled “Sponsored” and never determine which ZIP codes or counties we feature on data pages.

We do not accept paid content, sponsored statistics, or advertorials. No data source, advertiser, or affiliate has any influence over the methodology, rankings, or editorial choices on this site.

Update Cadence

Underlying data is refreshed annually, on the release schedule of the U.S. Census Bureau (ACS 5-Year Estimates release each December). Narratives are regenerated when the underlying data for a ZIP code changes. The methodology page displays its own “Last reviewed” date and changelog. This editorial-standards page was last reviewed on May 17, 2026.