What is millage?

Millage, also called the mill rate, is the amount of property tax charged per $1,000 of a property’s assessed value. One mill equals $1 of tax for every $1,000 of assessed value, which is the same as 0.1%. It is how every county, municipality, and school district in Pennsylvania sets its property tax.

To turn millage into a real bill, multiply the total millage by the assessed value and divide by 1,000. A home assessed at $200,000 in a place with a combined 30 mills owes 30 times 200,000 divided by 1,000, or $6,000 a year. In Pennsylvania you pay three millage rates stacked together: county, municipal, and school district. The school district is almost always the largest.

Here is the catch that trips up buyers: millage on its own tells you very little, because assessed value is not market value. Many Pennsylvania counties still assess homes on decades-old values, so a $450,000 home might be assessed at a small fraction of that. Those counties set very high millage on very low assessments. The honest way to compare is the effective rate, which is millage multiplied by the county’s Common Level Ratio, expressed as a percentage of a home’s real market value.