Collier County TRIM notice 2026: appeal deadline September 11

Collier County mailed its 2026 TRIM notices on August 17, which puts the deadline to challenge a property value at September 11, and the two county offices that publish that deadline do not state the same closing time

Money & World

The Editorial Team · August 24, 2026

Three weathered cream cluster mailbox units standing side by side on a concrete pad beside a residential street, under low warm sunlight, with a wooden fence, oaks and palms behind them and no people in view. Illustrative only, not a photograph of this event.

Stock photo

Stock photo. Not the actual scene. Photo: Javier Tormes Roque / Pexels

What it changes

If you own property in Collier County, the one document all year that tells you what the county thinks your property is worth went into the post last week, and the window to argue with it closes on September 11. The Collier County Property Appraiser says the 2026 Notice of Proposed Property Taxes was mailed on August 17 and can be viewed online now, and the Collier County Clerk, which is the office that actually receives the appeals, gives September 11 as the last day to file a petition with the Value Adjustment Board. That is eighteen days from today. Read the notice rather than filing it away. It is not a bill and nothing is owed on it, but it carries the taxable value the appraiser has placed on your property and the rate every taxing authority proposes to charge against that value, and it is the only mailing that starts the appeal clock. Note that the two offices do not publish the same closing time. The Property Appraiser pages say the petition must be filed by 5 p.m. on September 11. The Clerk page says 5 p.m. in the office or 11.59 p.m. online. Work to 5 p.m. and the difference cannot hurt you. Collier also charges considerably more than Lee County to file. A Collier petition costs 50 dollars for most types, and the fee is per petition and per parcel, so an owner of three parcels pays three times. A portability petition is 15 dollars. Across the county line a Lee petition is 30 dollars, with the same 15 dollars for portability, and Lee adds a 3.5 percent card fee for filing online while listing the reduced and waived fees Florida law allows, which have to be claimed by post. Every fee in both counties is non refundable, including on a late petition the board attorney refuses. Know which argument you are making before you pay, because they run on different clocks. A quarrel with the value is a Value Adjustment Board petition on the 25 day clock that August 17 started. A denial of an exemption or a classification is a separate petition with its own 30 day window from the dated denial. A quarrel with the tax rate is not a petition at all, and the place for that is the September budget hearings of the county, the cities and the school board. One more line on the notice is worth reading twice. It covers ad valorem taxes only, so the garbage, stormwater and other special assessments that appear on the November bill are not in the figure printed here, and a household that budgets from the notice alone will be short.

The Collier County Property Appraiser says the county's 2026 TRIM notices were mailed on August 17 and can now be viewed online, which sets September 11 as the last day for an owner to file a timely petition challenging a property value.

The Property Appraiser's TRIM page, a note signed by Property Appraiser Vickie A. Downs, states that the 2026 Notice of Proposed Property Taxes was mailed on August 17, 2026, and that a petition must be filed with a non refundable filing fee by 5:00 p.m. on September 11, 2026. The office's separate 2026 VAB information page gives the same 5 p.m. deadline.

The Collier County Clerk of the Circuit Court, which serves as Clerk to the Value Adjustment Board and receives the petitions, publishes the deadline in a longer form: September 11, 2026 at 5 p.m. in the office or 11.59 p.m. online. The Clerk's page also records that the 2026 session's organisational meeting was held on Monday, August 17, 2026 at 9:30 a.m.

Under section 194.011(3)(d) of the Florida Statutes an owner has 25 days from the mailing of the notice to petition on value. September 11 is exactly 25 days after August 17.

The Clerk sets the filing fee at 50 dollars for most petition types, charged per petition and per parcel, and 15 dollars for a transfer of homestead assessment, known as portability. Across the county line the Lee County Clerk charges 30 dollars per petition and 15 dollars for portability, with an additional 3.5 percent convenience fee on an online card payment. Lee lists reduced and waived fees available under Florida law, including a waiver on an appeal from the disapproval of a homestead exemption, which must be claimed by filing on paper by post.

A petition filed after the deadline requires a good cause statement, which the board's attorney considers and either accepts or rejects, with the filer notified within five days. The fee is not refunded either way.

The Collier board is made up of two county commissioners, one School Board member and two layperson taxpayers, one a homestead owner and one a commercial owner. Hearings are conducted by independent special magistrates who make recommendations to the board. The Property Appraiser's own page states that the board and the magistrates are independent of that office.

Lee County's notices carry the same calendar. The Lee County Clerk's dates page now lists the mailing by the Property Appraiser as August 17, 2026 and the deadline to file timely value petitions as September 11, 2026, and puts the Lee board's organisational meeting at August 26, 2026 at 2 p.m.

TRIM notices show the taxable value placed on a property together with the rates proposed by each taxing authority. They are not bills. The Collier notice covers ad valorem taxes only; the Property Appraiser's page states that non ad valorem charges such as garbage, stormwater and other special assessments are not part of it. Collier County tax bills are issued in November.

Collier County mailed its 2026 TRIM notices on August 17, which puts the deadline to challenge a property value at September 11, and the two county offices that publish that deadline do not state the same closing time

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