The TRUTH About the City's Property Tax Changes
The City claims tax savings are coming for 2023. Are they? Here's the math, and what the changes really mean for YOU.
City officials and their political lackeys are trumpeting the recent change to the City’s millage rate from 3.8 to 3.69, claiming it as the City’s biggest property tax decrease in twenty years.
The tax rate change is very slight. It's 11¢ per $1000 in taxable property value. And by the City's own admission, the change still allows the City to increase its tax revenue by 13.65% over last year, largely due to increased property values.
Given all that, I had to wonder, what does this change even do for the Sugar Hill taxpayers? What difference can YOU expect to see on your property tax bill this fall?
If you assume property values did not change at all this year and just perform the basic property tax calculation, the rate change to 3.69 mills would save you 2.89%. That means for a home with a fair market (appraised) value of $450,000 (approximately the average value of a Sugar Hill home), you would save a grand total of only $19.58.
That's not much, especially when you consider the current state of consumer price inflation (up an average of 3.2% from July 2022 to July 2023 according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics).
The Gwinnett County Tax Assessor’s Office gave me a spreadsheet of every property in Sugar Hill with the 2022 and 2023 appraised values, and I performed some basic calculations with the data. (Links to the spreadsheet and my calculations are included at the bottom of the article.)
While the people whose property values did not increase DO get a slight savings, it is far more likely that your property values increased and did so by a great deal.
Of the 9033 properties in Sugar Hill, 71% increased in value this year. Only 28% stayed the same.
Almost 76% of the properties in Sugar Hill are single-family homes, and 77% of them increased in value. The average increase was 20%.
Almost 10% of the properties in Sugar Hill are townhomes, and 64% of them increased in value. The average increase was 18%.
In the tables, you can see my calculations, and how much taxes increase for homes and townhomes of various price levels. I used the exemption of $2000, because that is still the amount of the General Homestead exemption for Sugar Hill in 2023 AND that’s the only one the majority of people in town will get. (The City has been misleading people about these homestead exemptions, as well).
If you own a single-family home and experienced the average property value increase of 20%:
If you own a townhouse and experienced the average property value increase of 18%:
As you can see, any tax savings you’ve been hoping for based on the election-year bragging of the City’s politicians never materialize if your home was one of the majority that increased in value this year. You’re getting a SIGNIFICANT tax increase.
With the time and effort the Mayor, City Council, and City Manager put into making you THINK you got a tax cut so you’d keep them in government, perhaps they could have actually given everyone a REAL TAX CUT.
That is, if the City’s finances are being managed as responsibly as they’d have you think.
Want to see the data from Gwinnett County Tax Assessors’ Office and my calculations for yourself? Go to Sugar Hill Property Data and Analysis - 2023
and Sugar Hill Tax Math.
Sugar Hill 2023 Property Tax At a Glance
