Every property tax bill in America is the same equation: assessed value times the local tax rate. The complexity, and most of the confusion, hides inside those two terms. Your "assessed" value often isn't what your home is worth, and the rate might be quoted in mills, per $100 of value, or as a percentage, depending on which county you happen to live in.
Three steps, done by your county assessor, not you:
Put together: a $350,000 home, a 40% assessment ratio, and a 25-mill combined rate works out to $350,000 × 0.40 × 0.025 = $3,500 a year. Same house, but change either the ratio or the rate and the bill moves.
One mill is one dollar of tax per $1,000 of assessed value, or 0.1%. It's a holdover from Latin millesimum, "thousandth," and local governments love it because small numbers sound painless. If your district's combined levy is 20 mills and your assessed value is $250,000, the bill is $250,000 × 20 ÷ 1,000 = $5,000. To convert any mill rate to a percentage, divide by ten: 20 mills is 2.0%.
Because ratios and mills vary so much, the only fair way to compare places is the effective rate: total tax as a share of market value. The spread across states is enormous. Here's what a $350,000 home pays at the effective rates used in our calculator:
| State | Effective rate | Annual tax | Per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Jersey | 2.49% | $8,715 | $726 |
| Illinois | 2.27% | $7,945 | $662 |
| Texas | 2.18% | $7,630 | $636 |
| New York | 1.03% | $3,605 | $300 |
| National average | 1.10% | $3,850 | $321 |
| California | 0.99% | $3,465 | $289 |
| Florida | 0.77% | $2,695 | $225 |
| Alabama | 0.49% | $1,715 | $143 |
| Hawaii | 0.28% | $980 | $82 |
The same house costs nearly nine times more to hold in New Jersey than in Hawaii: $8,715 a year versus $980. Notice Texas near the top despite having no state income tax; property tax is how it funds schools. Statewide averages also hide local variation, so treat these as a starting point and look up your county's actual rate.
Enter your home value and state (or your exact local rate) and see the annual and monthly damage.
Property Tax Calculator →Reassessment. Most counties periodically re-estimate market values, and after a hot housing market, assessments jump. A flat 1.1% rate on a home reassessed from $350,000 to $420,000 takes the bill from $3,850 to $4,620 with no vote and no headline. Some states blunt this: California's Prop 13 caps assessed-value growth at 2% a year until the home sells (with a roughly 1% base rate plus local add-ons), and Florida's Save Our Homes cap is 3% for homesteaded owners. In states without caps, the reassessment letter is the tax increase.
Property tax is assessed value times the local rate; everything else is vocabulary. What deserves your attention is the effective rate on your actual bill, whether the assessed value is defensible, and whether you're claiming every exemption you qualify for. When you're shopping for a home, run the tax alongside the loan: our mortgage calculator shows how taxes change the full monthly payment, and the closing cost calculator covers the prepaid taxes due at the table. A low sticker price in a 2.4% county can cost more per month than a pricier home across the state line.
Usually, through an escrow account. Your lender collects one-twelfth of the estimated annual tax with each monthly payment and pays the county on your behalf. That's why a mortgage payment can jump even with a fixed-rate loan: the principal and interest never change, but the escrow portion rises when the tax bill or insurance premium does.
The unpaid amount becomes a lien on the home, and it outranks your mortgage. Interest and penalties stack up, and eventually the taxing authority can sell the lien or foreclose, even on a home that's fully paid off. If you're behind, most counties offer payment plans, and applying before the lien sale matters.
If you itemize, yes, within the SALT (state and local tax) cap. That cap was $10,000 from 2018 through 2024 and rose to $40,000 starting with the 2025 tax year, phasing back down for incomes above $500,000. Since the standard deduction is large, many homeowners still come out ahead without itemizing at all.
Indirectly, yes. The landlord gets the bill and it's priced into rent like any other operating cost. That's one reason rents in high-tax states run higher than home-price differences alone would predict. A few states offer renter credits on state income taxes to acknowledge exactly this.