Your Georgia 2026 notice doesn't print a 299c freeze indicator. Here's the real 3-step verification workflow and the corrected year-by-year math.
# The 299c Freeze Indicator on Your Georgia 2026 Notice
If you're hunting for a 299c freeze indicator on your Georgia notice, here's the honest answer most articles won't give you: there isn't one. Your 2026 Annual Notice of Assessment (the PT-306R) does not print a checkbox, asterisk, flag, or "frozen" label next to your Current Year Fair Market Value. The statute that governs what counties have to put on the notice, O.C.G.A. § 48-5-306, doesn't require counties to disclose whether a 299(c) freeze is currently in place. So you have to verify the freeze yourself, using the information the notice does give you plus a couple of free county tools.
This article walks you through the real verification workflow, gives you the corrected year-by-year math for 2026 (which trips up almost everyone), and tells you exactly what to do if your 2026 value came in higher than the value your prior appeal should have locked in. If you need a refresher on what the freeze even is or how the 2025 law change affects who qualifies, read the full 299c freeze explainer and the Georgia 299c law change article first. This piece assumes you already know you're owed a freeze and you just want to confirm it's holding.
The Annual Notice of Assessment in Georgia is a statewide uniform form (the PT-306R, revised April 2025) issued by the Georgia Department of Revenue. Every county uses the same three-box layout: Box A holds your appeal rights, Box B holds your account details and the year-over-year values, and Box C holds taxing-authority information and the new rollback millage rate that HB 581 (2024) added.
Under § 48-5-306(b)(1), the notice only has to tell you a narrow set of things: the previous assessment, the current assessment, the year it applies to, a description of the property, the fair market and assessed values, how to reach the appeals office, the county assessor's website, a statement that supporting records are available on request, and the rollback rate. That's it. Nothing in the statute requires a county to label a value as "frozen under O.C.G.A. § 48-5-299(c)." So they don't.
You can confirm this for yourself. Gwinnett County's official "How to Read Your Annual Notice of Assessment" guide walks through every field on the form and lists the most common reason codes (market changes, property condition, additions). It never mentions 299(c) or any freeze-related flag. Fulton County's 2025 notice insert includes an "Appeal Freeze Change" explainer box about the new HB 581 rules, but that's educational copy, not a field label. A sample DeKalb TY2025 notice extracted directly from the DeKalb Property Appraisal portal prints two-letter reason codes like "KR - REVALUATION VALUE" in Box B, and it only ever shows 299(c)-related text (the code "FE - FROZEN VALUE EXPIRED FROM A PRIOR YEAR APPEAL") the year after the freeze ends.
That's the whole picture. No active-freeze indicator exists on any Georgia county's 2025 or 2026 paper notice. You have to verify it a different way.
You verify the freeze in three steps, and none of them require leaving your kitchen table for longer than ten minutes.
Step 1: Compare Box B values on your 2026 notice. Find Box B on your PT-306R. Look for two fields: "Previous Year Fair Market Value" and "Current Year Fair Market Value." If you won a qualifying appeal in 2024 or 2025, those two numbers should match each other, and they should match the value your appeal established. For example, if your 2024 Board of Equalization decision dropped your value from $485,000 to $410,000, your 2026 Previous Year FMV should read $410,000 and your Current Year FMV should also read $410,000. If both numbers are identical and match the appeal-settled value, the freeze is holding and you're done.
Step 2: Check the Value History on your county's property-records portal. Every metro-Atlanta county publishes parcel records online. Chatham County's Board of Assessors documents the cleanest version of this workflow: open the county property search, pull up your parcel, click the Value History tab, and look at the "reason" column for the current year. Chatham tells homeowners directly that if the TY2025 appraised value shows a reason of "APPEAL DECISION," a 299C freeze is currently in place. The same workflow applies in Gwinnett (Gwinnett-Assessor.com), Fulton (fultonassessor.org), DeKalb (dekalbcountyga.gov/property-appraisal), and Cobb. The exact reason string varies by each county's portal vendor, so look for any language mentioning appeal, settlement, or BOE decision tied to the year you won.
Step 3: Call the Board of Tax Assessors. Georgia statute requires every PT-306R to print the assessor's office mailing address and a phone number for the employee who handles appeals. Pick up the phone and ask, "Is a 299(c) freeze currently applied to parcel [your parcel ID]? What tax year was it established?" The staff are required to tell you. Key contacts: DeKalb Board of Assessors, 325 Swanton Way, Decatur, GA 30030, (404) 371-0841; Gwinnett Tax Assessors' Office, 75 Langley Drive, Lawrenceville, GA 30046, 770.822.7200; Fulton Board of Assessors, 235 Peachtree St. NE Suite 1400, Atlanta, GA 30303, 404-612-6440.
If steps 1 and 2 both confirm the freeze and you're not planning to file a new appeal, you can put the notice down. If anything doesn't line up, keep reading.
This is where most readers get tripped up. The freeze math isn't "three years after your appeal win." The statute O.C.G.A. § 48-5-299(c), as amended by HB 581, locks in the appeal-established value for the appeal year itself, plus "the next two successive years." That's three total tax digest years, including the year your appeal decision was issued.
Run the math against your 2026 notice:
If you won in 2023, don't waste an hour hunting for a freeze on the 2026 notice that won't exist. You're in a new assessment cycle, and you should read your 2026 notice the same way any other homeowner would, starting with whether the Current Year FMV is defensible against recent comparable sales. A DeKalb homeowner in this position may also see the reason code "FE - FROZEN VALUE EXPIRED FROM A PRIOR YEAR APPEAL" printed in Box B, which is the one and only place 299(c) ever appears in writing on the Annual Notice.
If you won in 2024 or 2025, your 2026 notice should show the frozen value, and steps 1-3 above are how you confirm it.
This is the scenario that matters most, because the 45-day appeal clock is ticking. Under O.C.G.A. § 48-5-311 and the PT-311A appeal form, you have 45 days from the date printed on your Annual Notice of Assessment to file an appeal with the County Board of Tax Assessors. Miss it and you lose the right to challenge that year's value, freeze or no freeze.
If your 2026 Current Year FMV is higher than the value your 2024 or 2025 appeal established, work this sequence:
One important warning before you file anything. Per statute exception (3), filing a new appeal during an active freeze year allows the Board of Equalization, hearing officer, or arbitrator to either increase or decrease the value based on new evidence. Filing a protective appeal "just in case" isn't automatic protection; it can expose your value to adjustment in both directions. Exhaust the phone-call-and-corrected-notice route first, and only file a formal appeal if the Board refuses to fix the notice administratively.
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The freeze covers exactly three tax digest years. When year four arrives, the county assessor is free to revalue the property at current fair market value, and that's the notice where your value can jump meaningfully. In DeKalb County, this first post-freeze revaluation prints two reason codes together in the "Reasons for Change of Assessment Notice" area of Box B: "KR - REVALUATION VALUE" plus the one 299(c) reference you'll ever see on a Georgia notice, "FE - FROZEN VALUE EXPIRED FROM A PRIOR YEAR APPEAL." Other counties use similar reason-code vocabulary, though the exact strings vary by each county's assessment software.
The practical implication: if you won your appeal three years ago, treat your first post-freeze notice like a fresh assessment. The frozen value is gone, and the 45-day clock is back in play. Pull recent comparable sales, check whether the county's new value is supportable, and decide whether it's worth appealing again. If you go through a new appeal and win with a reduction, a fresh three-year freeze kicks in for that year plus the next two.
Under HB 581, the rules for earning that new freeze are stricter than they used to be. You or your authorized representative have to attend the Board of Equalization, hearing officer, or arbitrator hearing (or submit written evidence to the hearing body), and the appeal has to result in a reduction in value. A "no change" outcome no longer earns the freeze. Cobb County's Board of Tax Assessors FAQ spells this out plainly, and the same rule applies statewide because it comes from the state statute.
For context on how common the freeze is in practice, a Gwinnett County Board of Assessors FOIA response covering all TY2025 residential appeals (re-verified from the raw Excel in April 2026) showed 20,229 appeals filed, 17,325 closed at the time of the data pull, and 14,235 winners who received a reduction, which is 82.2% of closed appeals. Among those winners, 99.2% received the three-year 299(c) freeze, and the median reduction was $15,600. So if you appealed in Gwinnett in 2025 and won, the freeze almost certainly got applied, and your 2026 notice should reflect it. If it doesn't, use the verification workflow above to find out why.
A few things to square away before you do anything with your 2026 PT-306R. First, the paper notice will not print an active-freeze indicator, so don't waste time looking for one; use Box B value comparison, the county portal, or a phone call. Second, the year-by-year math is "appeal year plus two more," not "three years after the appeal," so 2023 winners are out of protection for 2026 while 2024 and 2025 winners still have coverage. Third, if your 2026 value is higher than it should be, call the Board of Tax Assessors first and ask for a corrected notice before filing a new appeal that could expose your value to further adjustment.
Whichever way your notice lands, the 45-day window starts on the day the notice was mailed, not the day it arrived in your mailbox. Check the date on the form and put the deadline on your calendar before you put the letter down.