Arkansas Tax Records
This entry was originally written by Wendy Bebout Elliott, Ph.D., FUGA for Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources.
Tax records are available at the respective county courthouses and in the Arkansas History Commission. Nearly 600 tax books, original or microfilmed, for Arkansas counties are included in the collection at the Commission or available through the FHL. To access the microfilm number and determine which records have been microfilmed, see www.ark-ives.com/selected_materials/index.php.
Where county records were lost, the state auditor's copies are especially valuable. A complete list of these extant early tax records is included in Russell Pierce Baker, Guide to Microfilmed County Records at the Arkansas History Commission (Conway, Ark.: Professional Genealogists of Arkansas, 1989).
Personal property tax records have been published for a few counties. Tax lists, along with other sources, are being used to reconstruct the lost 1890 federal population census (see Census Records for Arkansas).
