A question I get asked a lot is about how property taxes vary from county to county or city to city.
Does it really make much of a difference if you live in Sandy Springs vs. Atlanta even though both are in Fulton County?
Can I save money by living in East Cobb or Dunwoody?
If you are talking about a normal owner/occupant home, it's not a straight forward issue that can be answered by just comparing millage rates. The different homestead exemptions that are offered in different localities make the caluculation a little more complex. Homestead exemptions have a larger effect on the lower end of the scale and becomes less of an effect on higher priced homes. So it really depends on what price range you are looking at. Then, throw in a varying HOST (Homestead Optional Sales Tax) credit in DeKalb County and it really gets complicated to make comparisons.
But never fear, I have created an online property tax calculator that allows you to compare property taxes in 44 taxing localities around Atlanta. Just enter the price of a home, and click a button and it will give you the property taxes in 44 different areas. It calculates the taxes with the standard homestead exemption and also the taxes without a homestead exemption.
Atlanta Property Tax Calculator
For every city or county, I have a page that has an interactive online spreadsheet that I have worked into the calculator. It also has a real tax bill for comparison purposes so that you can see exactly where the numbers are coming from.
Dunwoody Property Tax Calculator
Sandy Springs Property Tax Calculator
Cobb County Property Tax Calculator
City of Atlanta Fulton County Property Tax Calculator
To make it easy to quickly compare these four areas, I created a chart that shows you how the taxes vary as the price of the home goes up.
As you can see, up in the million dollar range, the city of Atlanta is more expensive and Cobb County is the lowest. Sandy Springs and Duwoody are in the middle.
Below is the same chart but with a close up look at the lower price range.
Here you can see that when you get under around $170,000 the city of Atlanta actually has the lowest taxes. This is where you see the large $30,000 homestead exemption come into play. In the city of Atlanta, the $30,000 homestead exemption is also used against the school tax portion of the tax bill where as it isn't in Sandy Springs.
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