Reading Your Assessment Notice: A Line-by-Line Guide for CA, GA, and FL

The number that matters is not the tax

Every assessment notice mixes two kinds of information: what the county thinks your property is worth, and what that value costs you at current rates. Owners read the cost line first, because that is the number that hurts. But the cost line mixes value changes with rate changes, and only one of those is appealable through the assessment process.

The discipline, in every state, is the same: find the value line, check the date that starts your clock, and decide inside the window.

Georgia: the Annual Notice of Assessment

Georgia counties mail annual notices, mostly in spring and early summer. The lines to find:

• Fair market value. The county's opinion of what your property is worth. This is the appealable number.
• Assessed value. In Georgia this is 40% of fair market value by law, so it moves mechanically with the first number.
• The appeal deadline. Printed on the notice, 45 days from the notice date. The printed date controls, and counties mail on different schedules, so two properties in different counties can have deadlines weeks apart.

The estimated tax on a Georgia notice is exactly that, an estimate using last year's millage. Do not let a mild-looking estimate hide a large value jump. And if you do appeal and the process concludes with an established value, Georgia's 299(c) freeze generally holds that value for two additional years.

Florida: the TRIM notice

Florida's Notice of Proposed Property Taxes arrives each August. The lines to find:

• Market (just) value. The property appraiser's estimate, and the appealable number.
• Assessed value. Just value after caps, including the 10% annual cap on non-homestead property.
• Taxable value. Assessed value after exemptions; the millage applies here.
• The mailing date. A Value Adjustment Board petition is due 25 days after the notices were mailed.

The TRIM notice also lists each taxing authority's proposed millage and public hearing schedule. Rate complaints belong at those hearings; value complaints belong in the petition. We cover the document in detail in TRIM Notice Explained.

California: the assessment notice

California counties send annual value notices in the summer, and the numbers reflect Proposition 13 mechanics:

• Factored base year value. Your purchase-price-based value, factored up by at most 2% a year.
• Assessed (enrolled) value. Usually equals the factored base year value, unless the county has enrolled a lower Proposition 8 value because market value fell below it.

The question a California owner should ask each year is whether the property's market value on January 1 was below the enrolled value. If it might be, that is a decline-in-value case, and the regular appeal window runs July 2 to September 15 in counties that mail value notices to every owner by August 1, and July 2 to November 30 in the rest, including Los Angeles. The mechanics are in our Prop 8 explainer.

The first-week checklist

Whatever the state, the same four steps in the week the notice arrives:

1. Find the value line, not the tax line, and compare it to last year's notice.
2. Circle the date that starts the clock: the notice date in Georgia, the mailing date in Florida, the filing window in California.
3. Ask whether the value matches what you know about the building's income, condition, and market.
4. If the answer might be no, get the county's own records checked before the window closes, because the window closes whether or not you are ready.

We do the fourth step at no cost. Start a free analysis and we will check the value against the county's own data. If it is already fair, we will say so, and there is nothing to file. One caution stated plainly: in our states a review board can raise a value the evidence does not support as well as lower it, which is why we screen for that exposure before anything gets filed.

County-by-county dates live in the appeal deadlines reference.