| Abstract
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These data are an Esri shapefile showing the taxable parcels and tax-exempt parcels for most of Montana. The parcels contain selected information such as owner names, property and owner addresses, assessed value, agricultural use, and tax district information that were copied from the Montana Department of Revenue's Computer Aided Mass Appraisal (CAMA) database.The archive includes a complete copy of the CAMA database. This consists of two separate files for each county, one for residential properties and one for commercial properties. The files are fixed-column text files whose content layout is explained in an accompanying document.These data are from July, 2004. Large areas of public land are missing from the data, and significant areas of private land are missing from Lincoln, Gallatin, and Madison counties, along with smaller areas of Sanders, Granite, Jefferson, Broadwater, Park, Sweet Grass, Stillwater, Carbon, and Beaverhead counties.The parcel boundaries were aligned to fit with the Bureau of Land Management Geographic Coordinate Database (GCDB) of public land survey coordinates. Parcels whose legal descriptions consisted of aliquot parts of the public land survey system were created from the GCDB coordinates by selecting and, when necessary, subdividing public land survey entities. Other parcels were digitized from paper maps and the data from each map were transformed to fit with the appropriate GCDB boundaries.Each parcel has an attribute called ParcelID which is the geocode field from the Montana Department of Revenue Computer Assisted Mass Appraisal (CAMA) tax database. The CAMA information is considered reliable for private, taxable parcels, but less reliable for public and tax-exempt parcels, whose owners do not receive tax bills.
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