Travis Bunn

Founder, AppealDesk · Published March 27, 2026 · Updated August 25, 2026

Connecticut's Appeal Deadline Moves by a Month, Depending on Your Own Town's Filing Status

Updated August 2026

Most Connecticut homeowners assume they have until February 20 to file a written appeal with their municipal Board of Assessment Appeals, and under CGS Section 12-111, that is the default. But it is not universal. Under CGS Section 12-117, any town whose assessor was granted an extension of time to complete that year's grand list pushes the taxpayer filing deadline to March 20, with the Board's hearings then running through April instead of March. Whether your specific town got that extension in a given year is not something you can guess from a statewide calendar. You have to ask your own assessor's office.

Whichever date applies to you, the appeal itself moves on a Connecticut clock: grand list, Board of Assessment Appeals, possibly Superior Court. Your mortgage servicer moves on a completely different one. Federal Regulation X, 12 CFR 1024.17, requires an escrow analysis once every 12-month computation cycle set by your loan, and that analysis does not check whether a Connecticut appeal is open. It pays whatever the town bills, built off whatever value is on the grand list right now. The gap between those two clocks is what this guide is about.

What "Over-Assessed" Actually Means in Connecticut

Connecticut assesses real property at 70% of its present true and actual (fair market) value as of the October 1 grand list date, under CGS Section 12-62a. That 70% ratio is uniform statewide, so an over-assessment argument in Connecticut is really a market-value argument: what would your home actually sell for, and is the assessor's underlying value estimate higher than that.

Here is the part that surprises homeowners: your town does not necessarily revalue every year. CGS Section 12-62 requires each municipality to complete a full revaluation only once every five years, on a staggered schedule set per "revaluation zone" by the state Office of Policy and Management, so no two towns are necessarily on the same clock. Between revaluation years, your assessed value typically carries forward unchanged (aside from permits, additions, or corrections), even while the actual market moves underneath it. That means the root cause of an over-assessment you are noticing this year is often a value set during your town's last revaluation, sometimes several years earlier, not anything that happened on this year's grand list. It is worth asking your assessor's office what year your town's value on record actually dates to before you build your case.

Two Levels: Board of Assessment Appeals, Then Superior Court

Connecticut's appeal path is shorter than most states in this series. There is no intermediate state-level board. You have two stops:

1. Board of Assessment Appeals (municipal). File a written application by February 20, under CGS Section 12-111, unless your town's assessor received a grand list extension that year, in which case CGS Section 12-117 pushes your deadline to March 20 and the Board hears appeals in April. When the extended timeline applies, the Board must also notify you of your specific hearing date and time at least seven calendar days beforehand, and no later than April 1.
2. Superior Court. If you disagree with the Board's decision, CGS Section 12-117a gives you two months from the date the Board mailed its decision notice to file an appeal in the Superior Court for the judicial district where your town sits. This is civil litigation, not another administrative hearing, and a contested valuation case can run well past a year from filing to judgment. If the court does reduce your assessment, the town must reimburse your overpayment with interest and any awarded costs, or, at your option, credit it against a future tax bill instead.

Two levels sounds simpler than the three- or four-level ladders in some other states, and in one sense it is: there is no separate state equalization board to route through first. But it also means your only administrative off-ramp is the Board itself. If the Board does not fix the value, your next step is a lawsuit, not another agency hearing.

Meanwhile: The RESPA Clock That Doesn't Care Where Your Appeal Stands

None of the Connecticut appeal calendar above touches your mortgage escrow account. Under Regulation X, 12 CFR 1024.17(c)(3), your servicer runs an escrow analysis once per computation year, a 12-month cycle set by your loan, not by your town's grand list or your Board hearing date. That analysis simply looks at what the servicer paid your town and projects what it expects to pay next, based on the bill the town actually sent.

So if you filed with the Board in March, got a decision in May, and are still waiting on a Superior Court date the following year, your escrow account has already funded at least one full property tax cycle at the disputed grand list value, and quite possibly a second one is coming due before your case resolves.

A worked example (hypothetical, not a real case)

Say a homeowner in a Fairfield County town owns a home at Connecticut's median value, $311,000, and pays roughly the state's average effective rate, working out to about $6,687 a year in property tax, or around $557 a month if spread evenly through escrow. (Actual mill rates and effective rates vary by town, so treat this as illustration, not a quote.) Her town's assessor received a grand list extension that cycle, so her filing deadline is March 20, not February 20. She files March 15, attends an April hearing, and the Board mails its decision in early May. She disagrees and files in Superior Court within her two-month window under CGS Section 12-117a. The case does not reach judgment until the following autumn, roughly a year and a half after her original filing.

• Fiscal year one, tax bill: Escrow pays the full $6,687 based on the disputed grand list value. Appeal still pending at the Board, then Superior Court.
• Fiscal year one, escrow analysis: No change. The analysis simply confirms the servicer paid what the town billed.
• Fiscal year two, tax bill: The next grand list carries the same disputed value forward (no revaluation due), so escrow pays roughly $6,687 again while the Superior Court case is still open.
• Superior Court judgment, say a 12% reduction: New annual tax roughly $5,885, a savings of about $802 a year.
• Town-level reimbursement: Under CGS Section 12-117a, the town owes her the overpayment plus interest, either as a refund or a credit against a future bill, her choice.
• Escrow-level catch-up: Only happens at her servicer's next scheduled analysis after it receives the corrected bill.

Roughly two fiscal years of escrow disbursements at the disputed value, for a case that started with a deadline she confirmed with her own town rather than assumed statewide. That confirmation step is the entire reason this article exists.

When the Win Finally Reaches Your Escrow Account

Whether you win at the Board or at Superior Court, the correction has to travel through two separate systems before it shows up in your monthly payment. First, your town: under CGS Section 12-117a, a Superior Court reduction comes with statutory interest and, at your election, either a refund or a credit toward a future bill. A Board-level win typically shows up simply as a corrected grand list entry and a lower tax bill going forward. Second, your servicer, which has its own federal rules under 12 CFR 1024.17:

• The surplus rule. If your next escrow analysis shows a surplus of $50 or more, the servicer must refund it within 30 days, provided you are current on the loan (Section 1024.17(f)(2)(i) and (f)(2)(ii)).
• The cushion cap. Servicers can hold a cushion of no more than one-sixth of estimated annual disbursements, roughly two months' worth (Section 1024.17(c)(5)). A lower tax bill shrinks the allowed cushion too, so a post-appeal refund is often larger than the tax savings alone would suggest.
• The off-cycle option. A servicer is permitted, not required, to run an analysis outside its normal annual cycle (Section 1024.17(f)(1)(ii)). Send them the town's corrected notice or the Superior Court judgment and ask; you have nothing to lose, and the regular annual analysis will catch it eventually either way.

If your case went to Superior Court and ran a year or more, do not assume anyone at your servicer's escrow department is tracking the docket. Nobody is watching the judicial district calendar for you. The corrected grand list entry and tax bill are what actually move your payment, so keep copies of the Board's decision letter or the court judgment and send them the moment they arrive.

Check Your Own Town's Filing Status Before You Assume the Date

Because Connecticut's five-year revaluation schedule is staggered zone by zone under CGS Section 12-62, a given town's workload, and therefore whether its assessor requests a grand list extension, can differ from its neighbor's in any specific year. A February 20 deadline one year does not guarantee a February 20 deadline the next, and a March 20 deadline in a neighboring town does not mean yours moved too. This is not something a search engine or a generic guide can tell you with certainty for your specific year; it is a fact your own town's assessor's office keeps.

Call or check your assessor's posted notices before you assume either date. Filing a written application one day past your actual deadline, whichever one applies to you, forfeits your only administrative path for that grand list year, and there is no Superior Court appeal to fall back on without a Board decision to appeal from first.

Key Counties

The highest-volume appeal areas in Connecticut cluster around Fairfield, Hartford, New Haven, Litchfield, and Middlesex counties. Worth knowing: Connecticut abolished functioning county government in 1960, so these are geographic groupings, not administrative bodies. Every Board of Assessment Appeals is a municipal board, run town by town (Connecticut has 169 towns and cities), and filing procedures, forms, and portals differ by town even though the statewide statutes and RESPA rules apply everywhere. Confirm procedure, and your actual deadline, with your specific town assessor before you file.

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