The tax order landed at 9:04 PM. Here is the Milton version.

The judge said yes, and quickly. Hours after Fulton County made its case Tuesday afternoon, Superior Court Judge Shukura L. Ingram signed the order letting the county start billing 2026 property taxes without a finished digest. It was filed at 9:04 that night. We read the signed order so you do not have to.

The mechanics are the ones we walked through last week: interim bills at 2025 tax rates on current 2026 values, targeted for around August 15, due October 15. A second notice comes later, a bill for the difference or a refund, once the digest is finally certified.

If you appealed your 2026 assessment, the order spells your version out: you get billed on the lesser of your 2025 value or 85 percent of your 2026 value, unless you choose full-value billing. If your appeal settles before the digest is approved, the county can rebill you at the settled value.

Now the Milton wrinkle. The order says, three separate times, that it does not apply to the City of Milton, or to Alpharetta or Roswell. Its final paragraph exists just to say so. That reads more dramatic than it is. Your annual property tax total is really three bills' worth of lines: Fulton County's, Fulton Schools', and the City of Milton's. The county and schools lines, the two biggest for most Milton homeowners, are exactly what Tuesday's order covers, and those interim bills are coming to Milton mailboxes like everyone else's. The city's line is different, and always has been: Milton bills its own city taxes in the fall, and the city told us on the record last week that its normal October schedule holds. The order leaving Milton out is the paperwork version of that same fact.

We asked the city Wednesday whether it requested the carve-out. City Hall told us it was checking as we went to press; when the answer comes, you will read it here.

Source: Final Order, In re: 2026 Tax Digest for Fulton County, case 26CV010167, Fulton County Superior Court, filed Aug. 4. The Roundabout has the signed order.