Jo Ann North

Property Assessor

I WANT TO ..

• Look at your file data on my property

• Estimate my property taxes

• Learn how the appraisal processes work

• Read about Business Personalty Assessment

• Find a parcel on Metro's online property maps

• Go to Metro Nashville Government's Home Page

What’s a certified tax rate?

Tennessee’s certified tax rate law is intended to prevent local governments from realizing a windfall of added revenues because of reappraisal.

After the Assessor certifies the total assessed value, additions and deletions are removed from consideration, and the tax rate then is adjusted to a level that will produce the same amount of revenues as the previous year.

Our 2000 combined USD-GSD tax rate stayed at $4.24 -- the same rate as the previous two years.  The 2001 reappraisal raised total assessments from $9.9 billion to $11.6 billion or almost 18%.  Approximately 5% of the increase was attributed to net additions.

The Certified Tax Rate (CTR) was then set by Metro Council at $3.70 or about 13% lower than the previous year's rate. However, to fund the annual budget, Metro Council held a public hearing and raised the certified rate by 88 cents to $4.58 - almost 24% higher..

How does it work?

The effect of the 2001 reappraisal is shown using three houses in three different neighborhoods. Each house was valued at $150,000 in the 1997 reappraisal and since they had no substantial improvements, such as adding a room or outside building or pool, remained at that value until the 2001 reappraisal.

The red house was in a “slow growth” neighborhood, averaging less than 2% gain in appraised value per year.

The green house was in an area where the gain in value matched the countywide annual median of 3.6% during the 4-year cycle.

The blue house was in a “hot” market area, where sales boomed and values averaged a gain of 5.4% per year.

Reappraisal updated the values on each house, restoring equity by redistributing the tax burden. As a result, under the Certified Tax Rate, the red house would have paid less tax, the green house would have paid the same tax and the blue house would have paid more tax. Note, however, that the total tax collected for all three houses under the CTR would have been exactly the same as in year 2000 -- and since the tax rate was not changed during 1999 and 2000, that would apply also to the previous two years..

This demonstrates how the certified tax rate is intended to work:

• properties with a gain in value less than the countywide median pay less tax;

• properties with a gain in value equal to the countywide median pay the same tax;

• properties with a gain in value greater than the countywide median pay more tax.

And, the amount of revenues brought in to the local government does not increase because of reappraisal.

Why did my taxes go up in 2001?

After Metro Council set the certified rate in June of 2001, it held a public hearing  and increased the tax rate 23.8% above the certified tax rate to fund the annual budget. All three owners in the example above then paid higher tax bills than in 2000 because the certified rate was not left in place.

In fact, since the final tax rate was raised above the previous year's tax rate of $4.24, almost everyone would have paid more taxes even if there had been no reappraisal.  The reappraisal distributed the tax burden according to the current market values of the property.

The only exceptions to the higher taxes would have been properties which actually declined in value.  Loss of market value happens infrequently and normally occurs only in cases where a natural disaster or fire occurs, damaging the property.