Every Georgia county assesses your home at 40% of its fair market value — that 40% figure, called the assessed value, is what your tax bill is actually based on. The county board of tax assessors (a different office from the tax commissioner) sets that value and mails an Annual Notice of Assessment when it changes. If you disagree with it, Georgia gives you 45 days from the date on that notice to appeal — to the county Board of Equalization, a hearing officer, or an arbitrator, using the state's uniform appeal form filed with the Board of Tax Assessors.
Your actual tax bill is the sum of several separate rates layered on top of each other: your county commission sets one rate, your local school board sets another, and — if you live inside an incorporated city — your city council sets a third, all independently, all adopted annually. Each of these is called a millage rate: one mill equals $1 of tax for every $1,000 of assessed value. Because assessed value is a fixed 40% of market value statewide, the reason two similarly priced homes can have very different tax bills almost always comes down to which combination of county, school, and city millage rates applies to that specific address — unincorporated county land, a city with its own school taxes, and a different county altogether can all land on meaningfully different combined rates.
One practical wrinkle worth knowing before you buy: homeowners inside an incorporated city that levies its own property tax often get two separate tax bills — one from the county tax commissioner, one from the city — rather than a single combined bill. Whether that applies to a specific address depends on the city, so it's worth asking directly.
We deliberately don't publish specific millage rates on this page. They're reset annually by three separate governing bodies per address and would be stale within months — your county tax commissioner's office always has the current figures.
Georgia's standard state homestead exemption knocks $2,000 off the assessed value of an owner-occupied primary residence for county and school taxes (it doesn't apply to school taxes levied by some municipalities). That figure is set in state law and has been stable for a long time, but on its own it's a small amount — in practice, most metro Atlanta homeowners end up covered by a considerably larger local exemption layered on top of it (see Section 4), so the $2,000 state figure rarely reflects what a typical owner actually saves.
Georgia also offers several statewide exemption categories worth knowing exist, each requiring its own application and proof of eligibility: an additional exemption for homeowners 65+ with limited income, a larger school-tax exemption for homeowners 62+ with limited income, and a substantial exemption for 100% disabled veterans (and for surviving spouses of military members, peace officers, or firefighters killed in the line of duty). The income thresholds and dollar amounts on these adjust periodically — your county tax assessor's office has the current figures and application forms.
In November 2024, Georgia voters approved a constitutional amendment creating a new statewide "floating" homestead exemption, enacted as House Bill 581 and effective January 1, 2025. Here's the mechanism: each homesteaded property gets a "base year" assessed value, and in future years, the state caps how much of that value can be taxed — the taxable portion can only rise by the prior year's inflation rate, even if the home's actual market value jumps faster than that. It resets to full market value when the home sells to a new owner, and it doesn't cap millage rate increases or new-construction value — only how fast an existing owner's taxable value can climb.
Here's the part that actually varies by address: every county commission, every school board, and every city council got to decide independently whether to opt out of this new exemption, by filing a resolution with the Secretary of State by March 1, 2025. A county's general government, its school district, and any city inside it can each land on a different answer — which means two homes in the same county, one inside a city limit and one outside it, can have genuinely different protection. The pattern across metro Atlanta: most school boards opted out (citing revenue predictability), while most city governments and several county commissions opted in or simply took no action — often because they already had their own older, comparable local exemption and saw no reason to switch.
The table below reflects the Georgia Secretary of State's official list of opt-out filings through the March 1, 2025 deadline, cross-checked against local government meeting records and news coverage. We found no evidence of any of these jurisdictions reversing course since, but this affects real money — confirm your specific address's status with your county tax assessor before relying on it.
| County / city | County government | School district | City government |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fulton | Kept it | Opted out | — |
| Atlanta | — | Opted out (APS) | Opted out |
| Sandy Springs | — | — | Kept it |
| Roswell | — | — | Kept it |
| Alpharetta | — | — | Kept it |
| Milton | — | — | Kept it |
| DeKalb | Kept it | Opted out | — |
| Decatur | — | Opted out | Opted out |
| Dunwoody | — | — | Kept it |
| Brookhaven | — | — | Kept it |
| Cobb | Opted out | Opted out | — |
| Marietta | — | Opted out | Opted out |
| Smyrna | — | — | Opted out |
| Gwinnett | Opted out | Opted out | — |
| Lawrenceville | — | — | Kept it |
| Clayton | Opted out | Opted out | — |
| Jonesboro | — | — | Kept it |
| Cherokee | Kept it | Opted out | — |
| Canton | — | — | Kept it |
| Woodstock | — | — | Kept it |
| Forsyth | Kept it | Opted out | — |
| Cumming | — | — | Kept it |
| Henry | Kept it | Opted out | — |
| McDonough | — | — | Kept it |
| Douglas | Opted out | Opted out | — |
| Douglasville | — | — | Opted out |
| Rockdale | Kept it | Kept it | — |
| Conyers | — | — | Kept it |
| Coweta | Kept it | Opted out | — |
| Newnan | — | — | Kept it |
| Fayette | Kept it | Opted out | — |
| Peachtree City | — | — | Kept it |
Source: Georgia Secretary of State's official HB 581 opt-out filings, cross-checked against county and city government records and local news coverage. "Kept it" means the jurisdiction did not file an opt-out by the March 1, 2025 deadline and remains covered by the floating exemption by default; several of these (Sandy Springs, Alpharetta, Milton, Dunwoody, Brookhaven) already had their own older, comparable local exemption and simply continued it. Opting out did not require a public reason, so we've noted a jurisdiction's own stated rationale only where it was reported.
Beyond the state's $2,000 floor and the 2024 floating exemption, several counties in our coverage area run their own, larger local homestead programs — these are exactly the kind of hyperlocal detail worth asking your closing attorney or the county assessor about, since eligibility and dollar amounts are set locally and change through local legislation, not something we'll try to pin down with a specific number here:
Homestead exemptions are not automatic — in most counties you have to apply, typically by April 1 of the tax year, and only once (it renews automatically after that as long as you still qualify and live there). Your county tax assessor's or tax commissioner's office is the authoritative source for this year's actual rates, exemption amounts, and deadlines:
The Georgia Department of Revenue's homestead exemption page and property tax FAQ are good statewide starting points as well.
The mechanics in Sections 1 and 2 are stable and don't change often. The county-by-county table in Section 3 reflects official filings through March 2025 and was last cross-checked in September 2026 — we plan to re-verify it periodically, since local governments could in principle revisit these decisions. If you spot something on this page that's changed, or notice a broken link, we'd like to know — see our contact information.