Georgia Property Tax Appeal: How It Works

Georgia's appeal right is strictly time-limited: you have 45 days from the date printed on your county's assessment notice, not from the day you receive or open it. Most counties mail notices in batches, so individual parcel dates can vary within the same neighborhood — the date on your notice is the one that legally controls. Miss that window and the right to challenge this year's value is gone; it resets only when next year's notice arrives.

The PT-311A (Notice of Appeal) is the universal filing form across all Georgia counties, though many counties now offer an online portal that timestamps your submission automatically. Either way, your filing must reach the county Board of Assessors — or bear a USPS postmark — no later than the 45th day. The deadline shown at the top of this page reflects the countywide target date for the current cycle; your individual notice date governs if the two differ.

Georgia law (O.C.G.A. § 48-5-7) sets the assessment ratio at 40% of fair market value. Your tax bill is that 40% figure — called the assessed value — multiplied by your county's millage rate. Every dollar you cut from the appraised value reduces your taxable base by 40 cents, so the real question is whether the county's estimate of market value is accurate, not whether the bill feels high.

Concrete example: a home appraised at $380,000 carries an assessed value of $152,000. If comparable sales support a fair market value of $350,000, you remove $30,000 of appraised value and $12,000 of assessed value. At a combined millage of 30 mills — common across metro Atlanta — that's roughly $360 off the annual bill. Across three years under the 299(c) freeze (explained below), a single filing can produce well over $1,000 in cumulative savings. For county-specific millage examples, the Fulton County and Cobb County pages walk through how the numbers play out in each jurisdiction.

When you file the PT-311A, you choose your appeal path. For most residential homeowners, the right answer is the Board of Equalization.

• Board of Equalization (BOE). A three-member citizen panel — independent of the assessor's office — that reviews evidence and issues its own value determination. Filing and the hearing are free. BOE decisions can be appealed further to Superior Court. This is the standard path for residential appeals statewide.
• Arbitration. Both sides hire certified appraisers; if they can't agree, they select a third who arbitrates. The decision is binding and you pay your appraiser's fee. This track makes sense when the disputed value is large enough to justify a professional appraisal — typically commercial or high-value residential property.
• Hearing Officer. Available for non-homestead property (commercial, industrial, multi-family) with a fair market value above $500,000. A single appointed officer hears the case. Most residential homesteads do not qualify for this track.

You select your track at filing and generally cannot switch after submission, so choose deliberately.

BOE panels are citizen boards trained to weigh evidence — they respond to facts, not frustration. Three categories carry the room in residential appeals:

• Comparable sales. Three to five sales of similar homes near yours, closed before the assessment date, at prices below your appraised value. This is the backbone of nearly every winning residential case. The letter template and comp worksheet organize exactly what boards want to see onto a single page.
• Record-card errors. Pull your property record from the county assessor and check the square footage, bathroom count, basement finish status, and lot size the county's mass model used to value your home. Errors of several hundred square feet are not uncommon, and a documented discrepancy is the fastest win available.
• Condition evidence. Photos and contractor estimates for anything a mass-appraisal model cannot observe — foundation problems, flood damage, an outbuilding that is structurally compromised. The county's model sees a structure; you show them its actual state.

One organized page of evidence outperforms a folder of unordered screenshots. Boards reward homeowners who make the decision straightforward.

O.C.G.A. § 48-5-299(c) is the provision that transforms a single filing into multi-year protection. When an appeal reaches a final determined value — through BOE decision, BOE settlement, or arbitration — the county generally cannot increase that value for the two assessment years following the appeal year, provided no improvements are made to the property. In practice, that is three cycles of protection from a single afternoon of preparation.

The freeze attaches to the final determined value, not to every intermediate step. If you accept a BOE settlement and stop there, the clock starts from that determination. If you escalate to Superior Court, timing shifts accordingly. For most homeowners, accepting a reasonable BOE result and banking the freeze is the sensible stopping point — the cumulative savings from three locked-in years routinely outweigh what incremental escalation could recover.

A property tax appeal and a homestead exemption are separate mechanisms that work together. Georgia's basic statewide exemption (O.C.G.A. § 48-5-44) reduces your assessed value by $2,000 — modest on its own, but individual counties and school districts layer additional exemptions on top that can reach into the tens of thousands for eligible homeowners (senior, disability, and local exemptions vary widely by county).

Exemptions carry their own filing deadline, typically falling in late winter or early spring of the tax year. Filing an appeal does not apply an exemption or extend that deadline, and exemptions are not applied retroactively to prior years. If you have not confirmed your homestead exemption is already on file — it generally needs to be filed only once for your primary residence — check the county assessor's records while you are already reviewing your assessment notice. Both levers reduce your bill; neither substitutes for the other.