A study of property taxes paid in the nation’s nearly 800 counties with a population of 65k or more shows that Allegheny County is on the high end. Not a surprising find, and something that we have pointed out for quite some time.
The study, done by the Tax Foundation, looked at data from the American Community Survey to find that, based on the County’s median home value ($121k) and the median property tax bill for owner-occupied homes ($2,528) the taxes as a % of home value was 2.09%, which ranked Allegheny as 42nd highest on the list, the highest for Pennsylvania using that metric.
Given the wide variations in assessed value, taxes from school district to school district, municipality to municipality, and the fact that some states allow for special districts to levy property taxes the Foundation has undertaken a massive project. Obviously aiming for the median is their way of trying to paint a picture of a typical taxpayer.
But consider that in order to produce what they find to be the median property tax bill from the median home value the millage rate would be around 20.8 mills ($121k x 20.8 = $2,528 in taxes). Taking away the County millage of 4.69 leaves 16 to be split among the municipality and the school district. It is safe to say that not many places would achieve that threshold: only 7 of the County’s 43 school districts have a millage rate under 20. Obviously the self-reported ACS data missed something. The tax hit might be bigger than the ranking shows.
Based on their methodology, Allegheny County took a bigger bite than Butler and Washington Counties, and was above the U.S. average as well.
