The Forest County tax map is a free online parcel viewer that lets you look up any taxable property in the county and see its boundaries, owner, acreage, and assessed value. The Assessment Office links to it from the county website, and it runs on an ArcGIS platform in any standard web browser without an account.1Forest County, Pennsylvania. Assessment2Forest County GIS. Forest County Online Parcel Viewer
Opening the Viewer
When the page first loads, a disclaimer appears about the accuracy of the data. The county posts it because digital parcel lines are approximate and should not be treated as a legal boundary survey. Dismiss it and you land on a map of the whole county with parcel outlines drawn over the base layer.
Standard navigation tools let you zoom and pan. The basemap gallery switches between street maps, aerial photography, and topographic overlays. Aerial imagery is useful for spotting tree cover, driveways, clearings, and water features that a plain parcel map leaves out, and the topographic layer shows elevation contours, which matters in terrain as hilly as Forest County’s.
Searching for a Parcel
The fastest way to find a specific property is by its parcel identification number, the unique numeric code printed on every deed and tax bill. If you don’t have the number, the search bar also accepts a street address or the owner’s name.
Enter owner names last name first. County records are stored in that order, and reversed names or small misspellings usually return nothing. If the owner’s name is coming from a deed, copy the spelling directly from the recorded document.
Once the search matches, the map centers on the parcel and highlights its outline. Click the parcel, or use the identify tool, to open the property detail card.
What the Parcel Card Shows
The detail card lists the parcel number, the recorded owner’s name, the property address, the physical dimensions, and total acreage. It also breaks the assessed value into two parts: the land value and the improvement value, meaning buildings, barns, or other structures on the site. Added together, those two figures make the total assessed value that drives the property tax bill.
This information is public because Pennsylvania’s General County Assessment Law gives every taxable resident the right to examine the county’s assessment returns.3Pennsylvania General Assembly. The General County Assessment Law Posting the data online is how Forest County satisfies that access requirement without requiring an office visit.
Making Sense of the Assessed Value
Forest County uses a predetermined assessment ratio of 100%, so the assessed value shown on the tax map is supposed to represent the full market value of the property.4Forest County Assessment Office. 2025 Tax Rates In practice, assessments across many Pennsylvania counties lag behind actual sale prices because countywide reassessments happen infrequently. The Pennsylvania Department of Revenue publishes a Common Level Ratio factor each year to translate between the two for appeal purposes, and Forest County’s most recent factor was 7.66.5Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Common Level Ratio Real Estate Valuation Factors That number gives you a rough sense of how far current assessments sit below present-day market prices.
The actual tax bill is the assessed value multiplied by the combined millage rate for the parcel’s location. Three taxing bodies draw from the same assessment: the county, the municipality, and the Forest Area School District. The school district component is the largest at 67.04 mills for the 2025–2026 cycle. County and library taxes add roughly 21 mills across the board, and township or borough rates range from 1 mill in Kingsley Township up to 13.5 mills in Tionesta Borough.4Forest County Assessment Office. 2025 Tax Rates One mill equals one dollar per thousand dollars of assessed value, so a $50,000 assessment in Tionesta Borough at a combined rate near 102 mills works out to roughly $5,100 a year before any exclusions or discounts.
If the Assessment Looks Wrong
If the number on the tax map seems off, you can file a written appeal with the Forest County Board of Assessment Appeals. Pennsylvania’s Consolidated County Assessment Law sets the default annual deadline at September 1, though county commissioners may move it as early as August 1, so confirm the current date with the Assessment Office each year.6Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Statutes Title 53 Pa.C.S.A. Municipalities Generally – 8844 The appeal must include your name, the property location, the current owner, the assessment being contested, and an address for hearing notices. Bring comparable sales, a private appraisal, or similar evidence to the hearing; the board will apply the Common Level Ratio factor when weighing recent sale prices against the assessment. A board decision can be appealed further to the Court of Common Pleas.
Getting an Official Copy of the Tax Map
A screenshot from the online viewer carries no legal weight. For a zoning application, a boundary dispute, or a real estate closing, you need an official copy from the Forest County Assessment Office. The office is on the first floor of the Forest County Courthouse at 526 Elm Street in Tionesta, open Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Call ahead at (814) 755-3532 to confirm what the office can produce for your parcel.1Forest County, Pennsylvania. Assessment
Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law governs the fees. Standard black-and-white copies run up to $0.25 per page, color copies up to $0.50 per page, and certification of a record up to $5.00. Tax maps are often printed oversized, which falls under specialized documents and may be billed at actual reproduction cost, so a large-format certified map will cost more than a letter-sized printout. The county cannot charge you for the time spent searching or retrieving the records.7Pennsylvania Office of Open Records. Official RTKL Fee Schedule
Pulling the Deed to Match the Map
The tax map shows current ownership and assessed value, but it does not include the full chain of title or the recorded deed itself. For the legal description and prior conveyances, the Forest County Recorder of Deeds maintains an online portal through INFOCON County Access with deed indexes from January 1983 forward and scanned deed images from January 1997 forward.8Forest County, Pennsylvania. Recorder of Deeds Pairing the parcel on the tax map with the recorded deed gives you both the visual boundary and the written legal description, which is what you want before closing on a purchase or resolving a question about where the line actually runs.