Milton's tax rate, next to every Fulton city's

North Fulton city tax rates since 2019. Roswell’s 2026 number is a proposal; Milton’s hasn’t been set.

Fifty-six percent. That’s how much Roswell wants to raise its city property tax rate, from 4.949 mills to 7.732. (A mill is $1 of tax for every $1,000 of taxable value, and Georgia taxes 40% of what the county says a home is worth.)

The city says the money would go to roads, aging buildings and equipment, rising health insurance costs and public safety, including the last year of its switch to a full-time fire department. On a $575,000 home, Roswell’s city tax would go from about $1,138 a year to $1,778, before exemptions. Its first reading was on Monday night’s agenda. The vote is Sept. 28.

Milton went the other way. Milton’s city rate is down 15% since 2019, from 5.319 mills to 4.503. That 4.503 comes in two parts: 4.193 to run the city, which council sets each year, and 0.310 to pay off the greenspace bonds. The first part sat at 4.731 through 2021 and has been cut three times since, and the bond part has shrunk every year. When council set the 2025 rate, the city called it the lowest in Milton’s history. In Fulton County, only Johns Creek’s is lower.

The city is the small part of your bill. Fulton County and the school system add 26.119 mills on top of whatever your city charges. Count everything and Milton’s 2025 rate was 30.622 mills, again second lowest of Fulton’s 15 cities. On that same $575,000 home, that’s about $7,043 a year before exemptions, and about $1,036 of it is Milton’s.

City	City rate	Since 2019	All-in
Johns Creek	3.742	−5%	29.861
Milton 2026 rate not set yet	4.503	−15%	30.622
Sandy Springs	4.731	0%	30.850
Roswell 2026 proposal: 7.732, up 56%	4.949	0%	31.068
Alpharetta	5.750	0%	31.869
Mountain Park	5.954	−39%	32.073
Palmetto	7.600	−11%	33.719
Chattahoochee Hills	8.200	−18%	34.319
Fairburn	9.560	0%	35.679
College Park	11.493	−9%	37.612
Union City	11.526	−20%	37.645
South Fulton	12.399	+7%	38.518
East Point	13.000	−3%	39.119
Atlanta	11.370	+11%	40.909
Hapeville	17.509	+9%	43.628

2025 rates in mills, lowest all-in first. City rate is what each city council sets, operating plus bond (Atlanta’s includes its parks levy). All-in adds Fulton County (9.039) and the schools (17.080; Atlanta Public Schools 20.500). Sources: Georgia Department of Revenue, corrected against the cities’ own records; Fulton County’s 2025 rate sheet; City of Roswell.

The schools want a mill more. Fulton County Schools is the biggest piece of every Milton bill, 17.08 mills, and the superintendent has recommended raising it to 18.08. The board gave it tentative approval Aug. 20, and three public meetings for comment come before its final vote. On that same home, one mill is about $230 a year before exemptions. When we asked in August, 20 of the 42 readers who tapped said don’t raise it; 11 said raise it and 11 said it depends on the hearings.

A lower rate isn’t always a lower bill. When home values climb, the same rate brings in more money. Georgia’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights sets a “rollback rate,” the one that would collect what the government collected the year before, and a government that goes above it has to advertise a tax increase and hold three public hearings. That’s the process Roswell is in now.

Milton’s 2026 rate isn’t set yet, but staff wants to hold it. At Monday night’s work session, staff said the rollback rate for the part council sets each year, now 4.193, came in at 4.205 for 2026. It went up because the county’s reassessments of existing property came out negative overall, so it takes a slightly higher rate to raise the same money. Staff recommended advertising the current 4.193 anyway: at the county’s new values, that should bring in about $18 million, a little more than the $17.7 million the budget counts on. Once a rate is advertised, council can adopt it or a lower one, but not a higher one.

Council hears the rate first on Sept. 21, the night it adopts the budget, and votes Oct. 5. It’s later than usual because the county’s final 2026 values only arrived Monday afternoon. The same day, a judge granted Milton, Alpharetta and Roswell, which bill their own city taxes, an order letting them set a 2026 rate instead of billing at last year’s; with the values in hand, the city says it won’t need it. The county’s own temporary bills, mailed in August on preliminary values and last year’s rates, are still due Oct. 15.

Every Fulton city, with the trend since 2019 and how we checked the numbers →