Centre County Tax Map: GIS Portal, Parcel Search, and Limits

The Centre County tax map is available free online through two separate portals: a GIS interactive map viewer for parcel boundaries, flood zones, and aerial imagery, and the DataScout assessment portal for ownership records and assessed values. Together they cover roughly 58,000 parcels across the county.1Centre County, PA. Tax Assessment

Which Portal to Use

The split between the two tools trips up most first-time users. The free GIS data and interactive viewer do not include owner names.2Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access. Centre County – Parcels For that, you need DataScout.

  • GIS Interactive Map — reached through the county’s Online Mapping Websites page. Use it to see parcel lines, FEMA flood layers, soils, aerial photos, municipal and school district boundaries, and to measure distance or area.3Centre County, PA. Online Mapping Websites
  • DataScout Assessment Portal — hosted at actdatascout.com. Use it to look up who owns a parcel and what the Assessment Office has it valued at.1Centre County, PA. Tax Assessment

If you only need to confirm a boundary, a flood designation, or see what’s on the ground, the GIS viewer is enough. If you need to know who owns the land or what it’s assessed at, open DataScout.

What You Can See on the GIS Map

Every parcel on the viewer has a unique tax identification number tying the land to its billing and legal records. Boundaries and acreage come from recorded surveys and deeds. Clicking a parcel opens a pop-up with its details.

The layers you can toggle on top of the parcel grid are where the viewer earns its keep:

  • FEMA flood zones. If a parcel sits inside a Special Flood Hazard Area, a mortgage lender will require flood insurance, so checking this layer before a purchase can prevent a surprise premium.3Centre County, PA. Online Mapping Websites
  • Soils data, useful for agricultural land, septic planning, or site work.
  • Municipal and school district boundaries, so you can confirm which taxing bodies apply to a specific parcel.
  • Aerial photography, which often reveals driveways, outbuildings, fence lines, or tree lines that have shifted away from the recorded boundary over the years.

The viewer also has measurement tools. You can measure a straight-line distance by clicking points along a line, or draw a polygon to get an area, and switch units mid-measurement from a drop-down.4ArcGIS Enterprise. Measure Distance or Area – Map Viewer The math is geodesic, so it accounts for the earth’s curvature even where the base map uses a projected coordinate system. That makes it fine for a rough acreage check and wrong for anything that has to hold up in court.

How to Search and Navigate

The viewer’s search bar accepts an owner name, tax ID number, street address, municipality, or school district.3Centre County, PA. Online Mapping Websites Enter any of those and the map centers on the match, with the parcel outline highlighted. From there you can zoom to street level, pan across neighboring parcels, or switch between a topographic base and high-resolution aerial imagery.

The viewer runs on ArcGIS Online, which needs a modern 64-bit browser with WebGL enabled. Current versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari all work.5ArcGIS Online Help. Supported Browsers Allow local storage, and turn off pop-up blockers for the county’s domain so parcel detail windows actually appear. Before the map loads, you’ll have to accept a disclaimer confirming that the data is provided “as is” and that parcel boundaries are approximations rather than legal boundary locations.6Centre County Government. Centre County GIS Data

What the Tax Map Is Not

The disclaimer is the single most important thing to understand about the map. Parcel lines on the GIS viewer are approximations drawn from recorded documents, not survey-grade boundaries. The county disclaims liability for errors in the data, and any corrections made after a file is distributed won’t appear in copies already downloaded.6Centre County Government. Centre County GIS Data

If you’re planning a fence, settling a boundary dispute with a neighbor, going through a real estate closing, or appearing at a zoning hearing, hire a licensed surveyor. The tax map is a starting point for research, not a substitute for a stamped survey.

The free data on the open data portal also stops short of owner information.2Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access. Centre County – Parcels If you download shapefiles for your own mapping project, you’ll get the geometry but no names attached.

Reading the Assessment Numbers

When you pull up a parcel in DataScout, the number that matters is the assessed value. That is not the same as market value. Under Pennsylvania’s General County Assessment Law, the county commissioners set a predetermined ratio applied to actual market value to produce the assessed figure on the roll.7Pennsylvania General Assembly. The General County Assessment Law

The tax bill tied to that assessment is calculated in mills. One mill equals $1 of tax per $1,000 of assessed value. Three taxing bodies stack their rates on the same parcel:

  • Centre County itself, set at 7.840 mills for 2026.
  • Your borough or township, with rates that vary by municipality.
  • Your school district, usually the largest slice of the bill.

As an example, one Centre County municipality totals roughly 82.98 mills for 2026. Applied to a $200,000 assessment, that works out to about $16,596 a year. The specific breakdown for your municipality is published on the county’s millage rate schedule.

If the assessment you see on the map looks wrong, the Assessment Office at 814-355-6721 or assessment@centrecountypa.gov can review the underlying record. Many errors (an inflated square footage, a missed condition adjustment) can be corrected without a formal appeal.8Centre County, PA. Appeal Procedures

Ordering Printed Maps or Full Datasets

Everything above is free online. If you need a physical print, an atlas, or GIS data that includes ownership, you have to contact the GIS Department directly. There’s no online order form. Email gis@centrecountypa.gov or call 814-355-8733. The office is at the Willowbank Office Building, 420 Holmes Street, Suite 301, Bellefonte, open Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.9Centre County, PA. GIS – Geographic Information Systems

Published prices include:10Centre County, PA. Data and Map Prices

  • Small format prints at $1 to $2 per page for standard maps and $2 to $4 per page with aerial imagery or custom work, depending on whether you order 8.5×11 or 11×17.
  • Large format plots at $1 per square foot for standard maps, $2 per square foot with aerial photos or specialty content, and $0.50 per square foot for lamination.
  • Atlas books at $30 for 8.5×11 and $40 for 11×17, half price for government buyers. Atlas PDFs on CD cost $15.
  • Parcel data with ownership information at $80 for the full dataset, with prior approval required.
  • Ortho photography at $100 for a full-year dataset, or $5 per tile.
  • LIDAR products at $250 for contours on DVD, $350 for DEM mosaics, or $5 to $7 per tile.

Special research requests can carry a $60-per-hour fee. The county does not accept personal checks. Walk-ins can pay with cash, money orders, or corporate checks; remote orders require a money order or corporate check made out to Centre County GIS. The department invoices you and releases the data after payment clears.10Centre County, PA. Data and Map Prices

Before paying, check the free open data portal at gisdata-centrecountygov.opendata.arcgis.com. Parcel geometry and most spatial layers are available there at no cost in shapefile and other standard formats.6Centre County Government. Centre County GIS Data The $80 parcel dataset is only worth buying if you specifically need owner names and assessed values tied to the parcel geometry in a GIS file.