Office of the Tax Assessor

The assessor occupies a unique position within the framework of local government. Assessors, though selected and appointed by municipal officials, are public officers whose duties are imposed by and defined in state law. When assessing property for taxation, the assessor performs a governmental function as an agent of the Legislature. The assessor is subject to certain local requirements and to supervision at both the county and state levels of government.

New Jersey's real property tax is an ad valorem or "according to value" tax. This means that each person pays tax based on the value of the property he or she owns.

Please see the New Jersey Homeowner's Guide to Property Taxes (below) or the Division of Taxation's How Property is Valued Brochure for more information.

Important Dates

Deerfield Township Property Tax Information

In New Jersey, municipalities, schools, and counties set their own budgets independent of each other. A common misunderstanding is the township has a say in the school or county budget--we do not. However, by law we must collect all property taxes budgeted by the schools and the county--they do not have their own tax collectors. We must collect in taxes what they tell us to collect.

All property tax money for use by the municipality, the schools, and the county are collected by the municipality through the township Tax Collector. Once collected, the township is required by law to forward the budgeted amount to the schools and county. We cannot withhold their money.

Of the property tax money the township collected in 2020:

the schools received: 62.2%

the county received: 35.3%

the township kept: 2.5%

Of all the property tax money you send to the township, we give 97.5% to other government agencies.

To put it another way, for every $100 of property tax money the township receives, we keep $2.50 for our operations.

That makes us the 4th lowest in the state!!

(The first three towns are all at 0%. Lower Alloways Creek as the nuclear generating station pay all their municipal taxes, Washington Township, Burlington County has the largest amount of state protected land for which they receive a large amount of state money to offset their hosting cost, and Walpack, Sussex County has 11 residents. Deerfield Township is also the only one of those towns that has a part-time career fire/EMS service.)

The schools and county hold public budget meetings just as the township does.