1.What the Queen Creek Sales Tax Rate Is Right Now
Three governments stack their rates onto one line on a receipt. Arizona takes 5.60%. The county adds an excise share on top — 0.70% in Maricopa, 1.10% in Pinal. Queen Creek adds 2.25%. Because the incorporated town straddles both counties, and is registered with the Arizona Department of Revenue under the compound county code MAR/PNL, one town produces two totals.
| Where the address sits | State | County excise | Town | Combined retail rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Queen Creek, Maricopa County portion | 5.60% | 0.70% | 2.25% | 8.55% |
| Queen Creek, Pinal County portion | 5.60% | 1.10% | 2.25% | 8.95% |
| Unincorporated Pinal County | 5.60% | 1.10% | none | 6.70% |
| San Tan Valley, through Sept 30, 2026 | 5.60% | 1.10% | none | 6.70% |
| San Tan Valley, from Oct 1, 2026 | 5.60% | 1.10% | 2.25% | 8.95% |
There is no longer a shopping-district surcharge anywhere in town. The 0.25% Queen Creek Special District add-on that applied at Queen Creek Marketplace, Cornerstone and the QC District was repealed effective October 1, 2024, and those centers now sit at the same 2.25% town rate as every other Queen Creek address.
The town line and the county line move independently, and which county a given Queen Creek neighborhood sits in is rarely obvious from the street. Ironwood Crossing was annexed into the Town in 2018 and Encanterra in 2019, both out of unincorporated Pinal County — annexation is what added their 2.25% town layer. If you are not sure which side an address falls on, our guide to the county line walks through it — and the county assessor’s parcel search settles it, where the mailing city does not.
2.Which Rate Applies — and What the County Gap Is Worth
The most common mistake is assuming your home address sets the rate. For an ordinary in-person purchase it does not. Arizona’s transaction privilege tax falls on the business, not the buyer — the Department of Revenue calls the city portion a tax "imposed on the vendor for the privilege of engaging in business in the city." The rate on a receipt is the rate at the store, so a Queen Creek resident shopping in Gilbert pays Gilbert’s rate.
Your own address does decide two things: use tax on untaxed purchases, and — a different tax entirely — your annual property tax bill, where the county split really does follow you home.
What the 0.40-point gap costs
| Taxable purchase | At 8.55% (Maricopa side) | At 8.95% (Pinal side) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| $100 | $8.55 | $8.95 | $0.40 |
| $1,000 | $85.50 | $89.50 | $4.00 |
| $5,000 | $427.50 | $447.50 | $20.00 |
| $10,000 | $855.00 | $895.00 | $40.00 |
| $25,000 | $2,137.50 | $2,237.50 | $100.00 |
Forty cents on a hundred dollars. The gap is real but small, and it is not a reason to pick one side of town over the other — the county line matters far more for which assessor and treasurer you deal with than for what you pay at a till.
Queen Creek has not adopted the optional reduced city rate on the portion of a single item above a set dollar figure. Some Arizona cities have, with thresholds from $500 to more than $14,000. Here the full 2.25% town rate applies to the entire price of a retail item, no matter how expensive it is.
3.Is Queen Creek’s Sales Tax High Compared With Its Neighbors?
On the same rate table, Queen Creek’s 2.25% town portion sits above Gilbert and Mesa at 2.00% and below Apache Junction at 2.40%. Chandler is the low one at 1.50%. On the combined figure Queen Creek is the more expensive place to buy: 8.55% or 8.95% against 8.30% in Gilbert and Mesa and 7.80% in Chandler. San Tan Valley is in the table as well, on both sides of the October 1, 2026 date its own town tax starts.
| Where you buy | State | County excise | City or town | Combined retail rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| San Tan Valley, through Sept 30, 2026 | 5.60% | 1.10% | none | 6.70% |
| Chandler | 5.60% | 0.70% | 1.50% | 7.80% |
| Gilbert | 5.60% | 0.70% | 2.00% | 8.30% |
| Mesa | 5.60% | 0.70% | 2.00% | 8.30% |
| Queen Creek, Maricopa County portion | 5.60% | 0.70% | 2.25% | 8.55% |
| Queen Creek, Pinal County portion | 5.60% | 1.10% | 2.25% | 8.95% |
| San Tan Valley, from Oct 1, 2026 | 5.60% | 1.10% | 2.25% | 8.95% |
Read that table as a map of where you buy, not where you live. The rate follows the store, so a Queen Creek household buying a taxable item in Gilbert pays 8.30% on it and the same household buying the same item at home pays 8.55% or 8.95%. Apache Junction is left off the combined column on purpose: its city rate is the highest of the group at 2.40%, but we could not confirm from a primary source which county excise layer applies at a given Apache Junction address, and guessing would print a rate we cannot stand behind. Queen Creek itself is the unusual case in the table — it is filed with the Department of Revenue under the compound county code MAR/PNL, which is why one town has two combined rates.
4.Where Queen Creek Breaks the 2.25% Pattern
Most Queen Creek classifications sit at the same flat 2.25% town rate. Contracting, lodging and long-term residential rental do not. Use tax is the odd one out in the other direction: its combined total is lower than retail, because the county layer is missing from it entirely.
| Classification (business code) | Town portion | Maricopa side | Pinal side | Who it lands on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Retail (017) | 2.25% | 8.55% | 8.95% | Everyday taxable goods |
| Marketplace or remote retail sales (605) | 2.25% | 8.55% | 8.95% | Online orders where the platform collects |
| Restaurants and bars (011) | 2.25% | 8.55% | 8.95% | No restaurant surcharge here |
| Utilities (004) | 2.25% | 8.55% | 8.95% | Utility service billings |
| Retail sales food for home consumption (062) | 2.25% | town rate only — see below | town rate only — see below | Groceries — the Town taxes them |
| Contracting — prime (015), speculative builders (016), owner builder (037) | 4.25% | 10.55% | 10.95% | Builders and owner-builders |
| Hotels plus additional hotel/motel tax (044 + 144) | 5.25% | 12.52% | 11.948% | Stays under 30 days |
| Residential rental, 30 days or more | 0% | 0% | 0% | Repealed January 1, 2025 |
| Use tax (029) | 2.25% | 7.85% | 7.85% | Untaxed online or out-of-state buys |
Groceries are taxed in Queen Creek
This is the line that most often catches a relocating household out. Queen Creek levies its full 2.25% town rate on food for home consumption, ADOR business code 062, where a good number of Arizona municipalities exempt grocery food outright. Arriving from a city that does not tax food, the weekly shop is a line item that moves.
The difference is visible on the same rate table, effective September 1, 2026: Mesa’s block carries no code 062 row at all, which is how that table shows a city imposing no tax on food for home consumption. Chandler (1.50%), Gilbert (2.00%) and Apache Junction (2.40%) each list a 062 row and tax grocery food at their own city rate, as Queen Creek does at 2.25%.
Do not assume 8.55% on groceries. Code 062 is a city-and-town-only line on the ADOR table: the Maricopa County and Pinal County blocks carry no 062 row at all, unlike code 017 retail, where each county publishes a 6.30% or 6.70% state-and-county layer. The only rate the table publishes on food for home consumption at a Queen Creek address is the Town’s 2.25%. Run the store address through the ADOR look-up tool if you need a figure to file on.
Contracting is taxed at nearly double the retail rate
Prime contracting, speculative builder and owner-builder work all carry a 4.25% town rate, taking the combined figure to 10.55% on the Maricopa side and 10.95% on the Pinal side. The tax falls on the contractor rather than on a line of a buyer’s invoice; how Queen Creek home builders price it in is between you and the builder. On a custom or owner-builder project the arithmetic lands much closer to you. How the taxable base and its deductions are computed is a separate set of rules — a question for ADOR or the contractor’s tax preparer.
The complete Queen Creek rate card
ADOR’s rate table effective September 1, 2026 publishes 29 business classifications for Queen Creek under region code QC. Twenty-four of them sit at the same 2.25%. Only five do not: the three contracting codes at 4.25%, the additional hotel/motel tax at 3.00%, and metalliferous mining at 0.10%. Note also what is absent — there is no code 367 or 369 on the Queen Creek card, which is the technical confirmation that the reduced rate on an expensive single item was never adopted here.
| Classification | Business code | Town rate |
|---|---|---|
| Adult use marijuana restaurant | 421 | 2.25% |
| Adult use marijuana retail sales | 420 | 2.25% |
| Advertising | 018 | 2.25% |
| Amusement | 012 | 2.25% |
| Commercial rental, leasing and licensing for use | 213 | 2.25% |
| Communications | 005 | 2.25% |
| Construction contracting — speculative builders | 016 | 4.25% |
| Construction contracting — owner builder | 037 | 4.25% |
| Contracting — prime | 015 | 4.25% |
| Hotel/motel (additional tax) | 144 | 3.00% |
| Hotels | 044 | 2.25% |
| Job printing | 010 | 2.25% |
| Manufactured buildings | 027 | 2.25% |
| Marketplace facilitated or remote retail sales | 605 | 2.25% |
| Marketplace facilitated or remote retail sales of food for home consumption | 606 | 2.25% |
| Medical marijuana restaurant | 221 | 2.25% |
| Medical marijuana retail sales | 203 | 2.25% |
| MRRA amount | 315 | 2.25% |
| Publication | 009 | 2.25% |
| Rental, leasing and licensing for use of tangible personal property | 214 | 2.25% |
| Restaurants and bars | 011 | 2.25% |
| Retail | 017 | 2.25% |
| Retail sales food for home consumption | 062 | 2.25% |
| Severance — metalliferous mining | 019 | 0.10% |
| Timbering and other extraction | 020 | 2.25% |
| Transporting | 006 | 2.25% |
| Use tax | 029 | 2.25% |
| Use tax from inventory | 030 | 2.25% |
| Utilities | 004 | 2.25% |
Two of those rows matter more than their names suggest. Code 605, marketplace facilitated or remote retail sales, carries the Town’s full 2.25% and a county layer of its own — 6.30% in Maricopa, 6.70% in Pinal — so an online order the platform does collect tax on lands at the same 8.55% or 8.95% as the store down the road. Code 606 does the same for groceries bought through a marketplace, again at 2.25% town. The 7.85% figure further down applies only where nobody collected Arizona tax at all.
5.Rentals: The Number on the Town’s Own Page Is Out of Date
There is no city sales tax on long-term residential rental in Queen Creek, or anywhere in Arizona. A.R.S. 42-6004(H), amended in 2023, bars every Arizona city and town from taxing residential rental real property for rental periods on or after January 1, 2025. ADOR’s current rate table carries no residential-rental business code for Queen Creek at all.
The Town of Queen Creek’s sales-tax page, as it read on September 20, 2026, still states a 2.25% rate on residential rentals. That is a page which has not caught up with a change in state law, not a tax anyone is owed. ADOR is the governing authority here and its rate table is the document to work from. It is worth flagging to the Town rather than quietly working around it.
Commercial rent is a different matter and is still taxed. The ADOR rate table effective September 1, 2026 carries Commercial Rental, Leasing and Licensing for Use as business code 213 at the Town’s full 2.25%, so a Queen Creek shop, office or warehouse lease still attracts city tax even though the flat next door does not. The 2025 repeal reached residential rental property only.
Short-term rental is a different classification and is firmly taxed. A stay under 30 days files under the Town’s Hotels classification — 2.25% under code 044 plus a 3.00% additional hotel/motel tax under code 144, a 5.25% town portion — and under State Transient Lodging for Arizona. Every short-term rental needs a TPT license, whatever the platform.
That puts an all-in short-term lodging rate of 12.52% on the Maricopa side and 11.948% on the Pinal side: ADOR publishes transient lodging (code 025) at 7.27% in Maricopa and 6.698% in Pinal, and the Town adds 5.25%. Both components are printed on the rate table effective September 1, 2026; the total is our own addition of the two, not a single cell ADOR prints. If you are underwriting a rental as an investment, the HOA dues on the property will usually move the return more than the tax line does.
6.Online Orders and the Use Tax That Is Lower Than You Expect
When an Arizona resident buys taxable merchandise online or out of state and the seller does not collect Arizona tax, the buyer owes Arizona use tax on it. The rate is not the retail rate. There is no county layer on use tax: ADOR says "there is no county use tax" in plain English in Publication 610A, and its rate table bears it out, listing use tax (code 029) at a flat 5.60% in every county column, Maricopa and Pinal included.
| Scenario | Rate build-up | Rate | Tax on $1,200 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Queen Creek store, Maricopa side | 5.60% + 0.70% + 2.25% | 8.55% | $102.60 |
| Queen Creek store, Pinal side | 5.60% + 1.10% + 2.25% | 8.95% | $107.40 |
| Untaxed online, used in Queen Creek | 5.60% + 2.25%, no county layer | 7.85% | $94.20 |
Two practical points. Do not apply 8.55% or 8.95% to a use-tax calculation; it overstates the liability by the county share. And use tax only arises where Arizona tax was not already collected — if the seller or the marketplace charged Arizona tax at checkout, that purchase is settled. Note that a marketplace sale files under code 605, which carries the same 8.55% or 8.95% as an in-store purchase, not the 7.85% use-tax rate.
7.Buying a Car: The City Tax Follows the Dealer, Not You
The short answer: buy from an Arizona dealer and you pay that dealer’s city rate, wherever you live. Buyers arriving from destination-based sales tax states get this wrong almost every time. The city privilege tax is sourced to the dealer’s business location because it is a tax on that dealer for doing business in that city, so registering the vehicle at a Queen Creek address does not move the tax to Queen Creek.
- Arizona dealer: the dealer’s city rate applies, whatever your home or registration address.
- Out-of-state dealer with no Arizona nexus: no Arizona tax at the sale. Vehicle use tax is owed instead at MVD registration, sourced to your Arizona address — state 5.60% plus your city’s use tax rate, no county layer.
- Private-party or casual sale: no transaction privilege tax is collected. ADOR’s vehicle use tax guidance describes casual sales between private parties as not taxable, while also grouping sales where no Arizona tax was collected into the use-tax-at-registration route, so ask MVD whether use tax will be assessed on your purchase before you budget for it.
For a Queen Creek address, a vehicle bought from an out-of-state dealer with no Arizona presence is taxed at 7.85% at registration — 5.60% state plus the Town’s 2.25% use tax rate. On a $45,000 vehicle, $3,532.50. The vehicle use tax guidance behind this carries an April 2020 document date, so confirm the current treatment with ADOR or MVD before you budget a specific figure.
8.San Tan Valley’s First Town Sales Tax Starts October 1, 2026
San Tan Valley incorporated as its own town on September 17, 2025 and has had no town sales tax until now. Its council adopted Ordinance No. 2026-06 on July 1, 2026, and ADOR assigned it region code SZ. The rates take effect October 1, 2026 — shortly after this page was published on September 20, 2026 — so both numbers are given below and the date on your receipt decides which one applies.
| Classification | Through Sept 30, 2026 | From Oct 1, 2026 | Combined from Oct 1, 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Retail, utilities, restaurants, amusements | no town tax | 2.25% | 8.95% |
| Use tax | no town tax | 2.25% | 7.85% (no county layer) |
| Contracting (prime, spec, owner-builder) | no town tax | 5.00% | 11.70% |
| Hotels plus additional hotel tax | no town tax | 8.50% | add the state and county lodging rate |
| Food for home consumption | no town tax | no town tax until Jan 1, 2027 | town adds 2.25% from Jan 1, 2027; the ADOR table publishes no state or county rate under code 062 |
Two traps sit inside that table. San Tan Valley does not tax groceries until January 1, 2027, three months after everything else, so between October 2026 and January 2027 a grocery run there is taxed differently from a hardware run. And truly unincorporated Pinal County addresses, a separate thing from town limits, stay at 6.70% throughout.
From October 1, 2026 most San Tan Valley purchases carry the same 8.95% combined rate as the Pinal side of Queen Creek, because the new town set the same 2.25% general rate Queen Creek has charged since 2007. Contracting is the exception that still separates them: San Tan Valley set 5.00% where Queen Creek charges 4.25%. Sales tax stops being a differentiator for ordinary retail; the full Queen Creek and San Tan Valley comparison covers what still is.
9.Why Pinal County’s Rate Has a History Worth Knowing
If you shopped the Pinal side between April 2018 and March 2022, you paid an extra transportation excise tax that no longer exists. The Pinal Regional Transportation Authority levy sat on top of the county excise tax and applied only to the first $10,000 of a transaction. The Arizona Supreme Court invalidated it on March 8, 2022 for that reason, and collection stopped after the March 2022 filing period.
Two things follow that matter today. The 1.10% standard Pinal County excise tax in the table at the top of this page is a legally separate, ongoing tax that the ruling did not touch, and it is still in force on the rate table effective September 1, 2026. And the refund window has closed: claims were due by April 9, 2026, and only businesses that filed and paid were ever eligible. Consumers never were.
The same two-tier idea the court struck down at county level is still legal at city level, which is why some Arizona cities can offer a reduced rate on the portion of a single item above a threshold. Queen Creek has not adopted it, so there is no high-value-item break here.
10.How to Check the Rate for Your Own Address
Rates change on fixed effective dates, so a page read six months from now may be stale. This is general information, not tax advice; for a specific transaction, ADOR or your own tax preparer is the authority.
- Work out which county the address is in, using the Maricopa or Pinal county assessor parcel search rather than the USPS mailing city — a "Queen Creek, AZ" address does not prove the property is inside town limits.
- Run the address through the ADOR tax rate look-up tool for the current combined rate by classification.
- Check the classification, not just the address. Groceries, contracting, lodging and use tax file under different codes at different rates.
- Note the effective date on whichever rate table you are reading. The current one took effect September 1, 2026; the table before it ran from January 1, 2026, and Queen Creek’s own rates are the same on both.
- In or near San Tan Valley, check whether the transaction date falls before or after October 1, 2026 — and before or after January 1, 2027 for food.
Sales tax is one of the smaller moving parts of a relocation budget, and it behaves predictably once you know the classifications. The parts that move more are property tax, utility setup and monthly service, and HOA dues. The 30-day relocation checklist sequences the paperwork, and the Queen Creek overview guide covers the rest of the picture.