Highest Property Tax Counties in the US: The 16 Above $10,000

The highest property tax counties in the United States are clustered in the New York and New Jersey suburbs, with sixteen counties nationwide posting median annual property tax bills above $10,000. Eight of those sixteen sit in New Jersey alone.¹ The nationwide average single-family home paid roughly $4,400 in 2025, so a homeowner in Bergen County, New Jersey, can spend more on property taxes each year than many homeowners elsewhere spend on their entire mortgage.

The Sixteen Counties Above $10,000

The Tax Foundation’s analysis of Census Bureau data identifies sixteen counties where the median property tax payment tops $10,000 a year. New Jersey holds eight spots on the list: Bergen, Essex, Hunterdon, Monmouth, Morris, Passaic, Somerset, and Union. New York holds six: Nassau, New York (Manhattan), Putnam, Rockland, Suffolk, and Westchester. Marin County in California and Falls Church City in Virginia complete the group.¹

A second tier sits just below the $10,000 threshold, with median bills above $9,000. That group includes Hudson and Middlesex counties in New Jersey, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties in California, and the Western Connecticut Planning Region.¹ The pattern is consistent: the New York and New Jersey suburbs produce the highest raw dollar amounts, while high-value California metros and parts of Connecticut form the second cluster.

These dollar figures reflect what homeowners actually write checks for, regardless of how their home compares to national averages. A $500,000 home in Essex County will produce a far larger bill than a $500,000 home in most Southern or Western counties, which is what makes the raw-dollar ranking useful for anyone comparing long-term housing costs across regions.

The Highest Effective Tax Rates Tell a Different Story

Effective tax rate measures the bill as a percentage of the home’s market value, and by that measure the geography shifts. Salem County, New Jersey, tops the list at roughly 2.3%, followed by Camden County, New Jersey, and several Illinois counties: Peoria, Kendall, Winnebago, DeKalb, McHenry, Kankakee, and Lake. Monroe County and other upstate New York counties round out the top fifteen, all above 2%.

The practical effect is worth walking through. A $200,000 house in a county with a 2.3% effective rate produces a $4,600 tax bill. That same $4,600 on a $700,000 coastal-suburb home reflects an effective rate of just 0.66%. The owner in the lower-value county is carrying a heavier load relative to home equity, and usually relative to income too.

High effective rates tend to cluster where local governments depend almost entirely on property tax revenue and where home values have grown slowly. When a county needs the same revenue but property values aren’t rising to generate it, the rate has to climb. That is why Illinois and upstate New York appear on the effective-rate list even though their homes cost a fraction of what buyers pay in Manhattan or Marin County.

The States These Counties Sit In

At the state level, New Jersey and Illinois tie for the highest effective property tax rate at 1.88% each. Connecticut is third at 1.54%, followed by Vermont at 1.51% and New Hampshire at 1.50%.¹ Nebraska, Texas, and Ohio all sit above 1.3%.

The bottom of the ranking runs the other direction. Hawaii is lowest at 0.29%, then Alabama at 0.37%. Many Western and Southern states cluster between 0.4% and 0.6%. Colorado and Nevada hold effective rates near 0.5% even in fast-growing markets, thanks to constitutional limits on assessment increases.¹

The Northeast and upper Midwest carry the heaviest loads. The South and Mountain West stay comparatively light. Texas is the major exception to the Southern pattern at seventh nationally with a 1.40% rate, because Texas has no state income tax and leans heavily on property taxes to fund schools and local services.

Why These Counties Tax So Much

Schools Drive the Bill

Public school funding is the single largest driver of local property taxes. Nationally, local property taxes account for about 36% of all public K–12 education revenue.² In counties with well-funded districts, the school portion alone can consume more than half the property tax bill. Small class sizes, competitive teacher salaries, and modern facilities all land on homeowners.

Overlapping Taxing Districts

A single property can fall inside the jurisdiction of half a dozen taxing bodies at once: the county, the municipality, the school district, a library district, a fire protection district, sometimes a park or sanitary district on top. Each one sets its own levy. The final bill is the sum, and no single body answers for the total. Fragmentation is especially heavy in Illinois, where some parcels sit under more than a dozen overlapping districts.

Limited Alternative Revenue

Counties without other significant revenue sources lean harder on property owners. Where there’s no local sales tax base, no income tax authority, and limited state aid, property taxes fill the gap. Older suburban corridors in the Northeast and Midwest face the added strain of maintaining aging infrastructure while their commercial tax base shrinks, which pushes an ever-larger share of the burden onto residential homeowners.

Assessed Value Is Not Market Value

Property tax bills come from a straightforward formula, though terminology varies. Most counties use a “millage rate,” where one mill equals $1 of tax for every $1,000 of assessed value. A 25-mill levy on a $40,000 assessed value produces a $1,000 bill.

The wrinkle is that assessed value is usually not the same as market value. Most jurisdictions apply an assessment ratio that reduces the taxable base to a fraction of what the home would sell for. A $300,000 home might carry an assessed value of only $30,000 in a state with a 10% ratio. That means comparing raw mill rates across county lines can mislead you. A county with a 50-mill levy and a 10% assessment ratio charges the same effective rate as a county with a 25-mill levy and a 20% ratio. Effective rate — total taxes divided by full market value — is the only metric that produces a real apples-to-apples comparison.

The Federal SALT Cap Limits Relief

Homeowners in these counties used to deduct the full amount of their state and local taxes on their federal return. That changed in 2018. Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the state and local tax deduction is capped at $40,400 for the 2026 tax year, with a $20,200 cap for married couples filing separately. The limit rises 1% each year through 2029, then drops back to $10,000 in 2030 unless Congress acts.³

A homeowner paying $12,000 in property taxes plus $8,000 in state income taxes fits under the $40,400 cap comfortably. Higher earners get squeezed, though: the deduction phases down at a 30% rate once modified adjusted gross income passes $500,000, eventually bottoming out at $10,000.³ In the highest-tax counties, many affluent homeowners still can’t deduct their full property tax payments, which pushes up the real after-tax cost of owning there.

1
Tax Foundation. Property Taxes by State and County, 2026
2
National Center for Education Statistics. COE – Public School Revenue Sources
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 164 – Taxes