How to Appeal Your Property Taxes in Georgia (2026 Guide)

Georgia gives you 45 days. That is the whole window. Under O.C.G.A. §48-5-311(e)(1), you must file a notice of appeal "within 45 days from the date of mailing the notice of assessment," and the notice itself is required by O.C.G.A. §48-5-306(b)(2)(A) to tell you so in plain language: "If you do not file an appeal by this date, your right to file an appeal will be lost."

The clock runs from the date printed on your notice, not from a statewide date. That single detail is where most Georgia homeowners lose the right to appeal, because they assume there is one deadline for the whole state and there is not. Georgia has 159 counties and each mails its Annual Notices of Assessment on its own schedule.

The 2026 Fulton County deadline

Fulton County announced that 2026 assessment notices were available online in June, and set the appeal deadline at Friday, July 31, 2026. The county's own wording matters here: that date applies to "most property owners, unless another date is specifically printed on the notice of assessment." (Source: Fulton County, 2026 Assessments Now Available Online.)

So July 31 is not universal, even inside Fulton. Read the date on your own notice and count 45 days from it. If your notice prints a different date, your notice wins.

DeKalb County runs on its own mailing schedule, and the same 45-day rule applies from each individual notice date. If you own in DeKalb, check the date on your notice today rather than assuming Fulton's timeline applies to you.

What the county is actually claiming

Georgia assesses at 40% of fair market value (O.C.G.A. §48-5-7(a)), and your millage rate is applied to that assessed value. So the number to argue about is the fair market value on your notice, not the assessed value and not the tax bill.

Fair market value has a statutory definition worth memorizing before you write a word of your appeal. Under O.C.G.A. §48-5-2(3), it is "the amount a knowledgeable buyer would pay for the property and a willing seller would accept for the property at an arm's length, bona fide sale."

That definition is your entire case. Not what you can afford. Not what the bill was last year. What an arm's length buyer would actually pay.

The grounds you are allowed to raise

O.C.G.A. §48-5-311(e)(1)(A)(i) is specific. The Board of Equalization hears "matters of taxability, uniformity of assessment, and value, and, for residents, as to denials of homestead exemptions."

Four grounds, and two of them are the ones most residential appeals live on:

• Value. The county's fair market value exceeds what an arm's length sale would produce. Evidence: recent comparable sales.
• Uniformity. Your property is assessed out of line with comparable properties in your county, regardless of whether the raw number looks defensible on its own.

You can raise more than one. State them explicitly in your notice of appeal rather than making the board infer them.

Your three routes

When you file, you elect where the appeal goes. O.C.G.A. §48-5-311 gives residential owners three options:

County Board of Equalization. The default and the free one. The BOE is a panel of three members plus three alternates (O.C.G.A. §48-5-311(a.2)(1)). No filing fee. This is where nearly every residential value dispute belongs.

Hearing officer. Available under O.C.G.A. §48-5-311(e.1) for nonhomestead property with a fair market value over $750,000. If you see an older guide citing a $500,000 threshold, that figure is stale.

Arbitration. Available under O.C.G.A. §48-5-311(f). Binding, and it carries a fee. Read the subsection before electing it, because you are giving up the BOE route.

The 180-day rule almost nobody uses

This is the most underused provision in Georgia property tax law. Under O.C.G.A. §48-5-311(e)(3)(A), once you file, the board of tax assessors "shall review the appeal and notify the taxpayer" within 180 days. And then the operative sentence: if the board "fails to respond ... within such 180 day period, the property valuation asserted by the taxpayer ... shall become the assessed fair market value."

Your number becomes the number. High-volume counties can get an additional 180 days under (e)(3)(B), and there is a good-cause extension under (e)(3)(C), so this is not a loophole you can plan around. But it is a real consequence for county inaction, and it is a reason to state a specific value in your appeal rather than writing "too high." If you never assert a value, there is no value to become final.

Note also what does not exist: there is no 300-day rule in Georgia. Guides that cite one are repeating an error.

Win once, hold it for three years

O.C.G.A. §48-5-299(c) is the reason a Georgia appeal is worth more than one year of savings. A value established by an appeal decision or by written agreement under §48-5-311 "may not be increased by the board of tax assessors during the next two successive years."

Appeal year plus two. That is the "three-year freeze" you see marketed. It comes with four statutory exceptions: you do not show up or present no evidence, you return a different value yourself, you file a new appeal in the window, or the property gets substantial additions or improvements or the record contained an error.

If the BOE says no

O.C.G.A. §48-5-311(g)(2) gives you 30 days from the decision to appeal to superior court. The BOE decision itself must be signed, dated, and delivered to both parties under §48-5-311(e)(2) and (e)(6), so you will have a document with a date on it. Count from that.

What to do this week

1. Find your notice and read the date. Not the county's announced deadline. The date on your paper.
2. Count 45 days from that date. Write it on a calendar.
3. Pull recent arm's length sales of properties genuinely similar to yours, and be honest about which ones are actually comparable.
4. File in writing using Form PT-311A, elect the Board of Equalization unless you have a specific reason not to, and state the value you are asserting.

The BOE route costs nothing but the time to build the evidence. For county-level filing detail on Fulton, see our Fulton County guide. For the statewide picture, deadlines, and the appeal body for your county, see our Georgia property tax appeal guide.

Check Your Address

Free check against 22.7M real parcel records across 7 states, in 30 seconds, no signup. Optional $49 kit, flat and one time, and you keep 100% of your savings.