Research Corner: Get Your Tax Facts Here

Over the past year, the Georgia Department of Revenue streamlined and revised their website to better showcase the wealth of information that is contained therein. Aside from general tax information, the Department has a special webpage dedicated to local government services located at http://dor.georgia.gov/local-government-services. This webpage provides in-depth information that can assist counties with data requests, tax submission requirements and related materials, training information and opportunities, and tax policies and procedures. 

The Local Government Division Services webpage provides detailed information on sales tax distributions, digest requirements, public utilities return forms, unclaimed property, and online and training opportunities. Need to review sales tax distributions for your county for the past three years? Searching for tax digest submission forms? Want to compare your digest values with neighboring counties? Looking for a training class for your appraisal staff? You can find all that and more through this webpage. 

The Digest Compliance Section provides values for timber, conservation use, and forestland properties, as well as training and certification programs for taxing officials and staff, digest submission packages, appraisal procedure manuals, information on rollback rates and ad valorem taxes levied, and the county digest review process. 

Property tax facts are listed for all 159 counties, which includes the type of homestead exemptions available, whether Freeport exemptions are given and, if so, at what percentage, ad valorem tax payment deadlines, motor vehicle registration information, mobile home taxation guidelines, taxing officials contact information, and general tax, refund, and appeal requirements. This information is provided directly by the tax commissioner of each county and should be updated annually. These facts can be helpful if your county is looking to modify its tax policy or if you want to adopt a new homestead exemption and would like examples as to what type of exemptions are being offered by other counties. These facts are also used by businesses when deciding where to locate as well as taxpayers in deciding where to move, so it is very important that this information is kept up-to-date. 

Aside from the property tax facts provided by each county, the webpage also provides detailed digest information through the tax digest consolidated summaries. These summaries depict the assessed totals of all property listed on a county's tax digest separated by tax district. Millage rates for each taxing jurisdiction are also available by year.  

The Sales Tax Distribution Section provides sales tax rate, distribution, submission and compliance information. One section is dedicated to sales tax information for taxing authorities. This section contains applicable forms, sales tax commodity reports and commodity codes, information bulletins, submission guidelines, frequently asked questions and sales tax distribution rates for cities and counties.

Detailed information is provided about sales tax rates from a historical chart that provides the start and end date for every sales tax adopted by each county to a monthly rate chart that shows the breakout of counties that have a TSPLOST, SPLOST, LOST, HOST or ELOST. Aside from the types of sales tax collected by each county, an online database is also available that will allow the user to access local sales tax distributions by taxing jurisdiction and by time period. This feature located at https://gtc.dor.ga.gov further allows the user to access all sales tax information for all counties on a month-by-month basis. The webpage also provides periodic sales tax information for specific services. Sales tax rates for energy sold to manufacturers is available for each quarter and prepaid wireless yearly distributions are made available each October.

Another point of interest for counties, beyond the local government services webpage, are the yearly reports that the Department of Revenue publishes that provide in-depth information on both state and local government tax information. The statistical reports provide specific tax information relating to counties, including assessed property values of the gross general, net general, and public utility digests; sales tax distributions by county, and the property tax millage rate by county. The purpose of the property tax administration annual report is to provide the General Assembly with information on the uniformity of valuations between the counties and the fiscal impact on counties related to preferential assessment and conservation use assessment legislation. All Department publications can be found at http://dor.georgia.gov/publications. 

The Local Government Services Section of the Department of Revenue’s website is a great resource for county governments to use when seeking information about local government taxes. For more information on local government services information provided by the Department of Revenue, please visit their webpage at http://dor.georgia.gov/local-government-services.