No Georgia homestead relief?  OOFFAAH!  It's like getting taken down by an NFL player you never saw coming, although you thought you heard he was in the neighborhood.  A friend of mine from Roswell called today, frantic that the tax bill had gone UP.  Something to do with that word homestead again.  Yesterday, another friend in Gwinnett had just returned from the tax assessor's office.  He doesn't want to escrow his taxes, he just pays them in person once a year.  SLAM!  $460.00 more dollars in taxes than he thought he owed, but he'd been alerted by snail mail and was vaguely aware the freight train was coming, he just ignored the crossing guard lights and bells.  So while the Georgia Homestead Exemption lives (for now), expect tax increases.  Doesn't that usually occur when property values go up?  That's what we all thought.

The Georgia Homestead has provided tax relief to Georgia homeowners in the form of a credit on their property tax bills for many years.   However, as in many other states and the the nation...falling tax revenues, rising unemployment has put an extreme burden on many states including GA.   The GA state government has scrambled to balance revenue-strapped budgets - Georgia lawmakers approved the repeal of the Homeowner's Tax Relief Grant (HTRG).  For most Georgian homeowners, this has already translated into an average increase of between $200 and $300 on each property tax bill.  Be prepared for the loss of homestead this year when paying your tax bill, higher mortgage escrows, less government service and higher tax bill in the future.

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