What is the Tax Rate?
The tax rate is a number used together with the assessed value of a property to calculate a Property or School Tax Bill. The Tax Rate is based upon two things: The Levy of the taxing unit and the Taxable Assessed Value of all property within that unit.

What is the Levy?
A levy is a function of the Budget for an assessing unit and is the dollar amount that needs to be collected in property taxes. If you subtract all sources of revenue (aside from property taxes) from the expenditures of the budget, you arrive at the levy. The property tax levy is the amount of money that cannot be raised through other sources (like fees, sales tax, state aid, etc) and must be raised in property taxes.

What is an Assessment?
In New York State, the property tax is an ad valorem tax that uses the full market value of real property to attempt a fair distribution of the tax burden. All real property is assessed for this purpose and is given a value proportional to its estimated market value (as determined by the local Assessor). The assessment can be set at 100% of the full value of the property (assessed value = market value estimate) or at some fraction of the market value (assessed value < market value estimate). Assessments cannot exceed full value, and if you believe yours does you have the right to seek a review of that assessment.

What is the Taxable Assessed Value?
All real property is subject to taxation unless specifically exempt by law. Real property can be wholly exempt, as is the case with most public and government owned properties, or it can be partially exempt to some amount. Any value of the assessment that is not exempt is referred to as the “Taxable Assessed Value.”

What are Special Districts?
A special district is a taxing unit formed in response to a specific need for a service benefiting the owners of real property within the district boundaries. A special district could be established to provide fire protection, public sewer or water service, solid waste disposal, and more. Special Districts may also be formed to defray the cost of making and maintaining a public improvement (such as sidewalks or street lights). In many cases you will see Special Districts calculated using a Unit Charge as opposed to using the assessed value. Unit Charges are flat rate calculations where the rate is multiplied by the number of “units” a property has within that district.

How is the Ad Valorem Tax Rate calculated?
As mentioned above, the Tax Rate is made up of two components: the Levy of the taxing unit and the Taxable Assessed Value of all property within the taxing unit. Once you have the total Levy and the Taxable Value you can calculate the rate:

For example, a town has a tax Levy of $1,350,027 and the total Taxable Assessed Value in the entire town is $250,490,359:

So, what does this Tax Rate mean?
Another way to read the tax rate is how it relates to the value per thousand dollars of the assessment. Our tax rate of 5.38954 could be read as “$5.39 per thousand dollars of assessed value.” To calculate the tax amount for a specific property: first divide the Taxable Assessed Value of the property by 1000 and then multiply it by the tax rate. For a property with a taxable assessed value of $100,000:

Thus, the town tax bill amount for this property valued at $100,000 would be $538.95

For a property in the same town with a taxable assessed value of $35,000:

Thus, the town tax bill for this property valued at $35,000 would be $188.63

How is the Unit Charge Tax Rate calculated?

A Unit Charge tax rate is calculated similarly to the Ad Valorem rate, except that the denominator of the equation is the total number of units in the special district.

For example, the Levy for a sewer district is $100,000 and there are 525 units within the Sewer district:

So, for every unit the property has within the District, they will pay $190.48 per unit.