Georgia law sets December 20 as the default, but some counties' due dates are earlier. See the published 2026 dates (estimated) for seven counties.
# When Is Your Georgia Property Tax Due? 2026 Dates by County
Georgia law sets December 20 as the default property tax due date, and your county can move it earlier or split the bill into two installments. In the seven counties listed below, published 2026 dates run from September 30 (estimated), for City of Atlanta taxes on Fulton County bills and DeKalb County's first installment, to November 30 (estimated) in Richmond County.
Each date is marked estimated because it's our reading of the county's own published page on September 29, 2026, and the date on your bill is the one that governs. If yours isn't one of the seven, see "What if your county isn't listed?" below.
Confirm the due date on your tax bill.
Each county name links to the county government or tax commissioner page its 2026 date (estimated) comes from.
The chart below lines up those estimated dates against the December 20 statewide default.
Every due date here is earlier than the December 20 default. DeKalb's two dates are installments; Fulton's two dates split City of Atlanta taxes from all other taxes. All dates are estimated.
Only where your county has set up installment billing. The Georgia Department of Revenue says some counties require the tax to be paid in two installments.
DeKalb's second installment is due Monday, November 16 (estimated), because its page lists November 15, which falls on a Sunday in 2026, and says a weekend due date moves to the next business day. The installment page shows no year, but the tax commissioner's September 2026 site notice gave the same first-installment date.
Fulton County's two dates aren't installments; they split City of Atlanta taxes from the rest of the bill. Fulton's tax commissioner does accept partial payments, but interest accrues on the unpaid principal until it's paid in full.
If one of these dates has already passed, call the tax commissioner's office for the amount you now owe; DeKalb's page lists a 5% penalty for a late first or second installment.
Confirm the due date on your tax bill.
It depends on your county: the date can come from a local resolution or straight from state law. Unless the law sets another date, taxes are due December 20, and the Georgia Department of Revenue says a local governing authority may adopt "a resolution changing the official due date for tax payment to December 1st or November 15th," or may "implement installment billing with multiple due dates." Georgia law sets some counties' dates directly, too: O.C.G.A. 48-5-24(e), for counties with a population of 680,000 to 690,000, makes taxes "due and payable on August 15" and delinquent "if not paid by October 15 of each year." The dates in the list above come from each county's own published bill information, whichever rule sets them. To find out which rule sets yours, ask your tax commissioner's office; the date printed on your bill is the one to pay by.
Your county tax commissioner prepares the bill each year and collects the tax for the county and the school system (O.C.G.A. 48-5-34, as revised by Senate Bill 566 in 2026).
Cities can run their own schedule too: Cobb County says its seven cities bill and collect their own property taxes.
Confirm the due date on your tax bill.
An open appeal doesn't cancel your bill. If your county sends bills before your appeal is decided, you get a temporary bill. In most cases it's based on the lower of last year's final value or 85% of this year's value (O.C.G.A. 48-5-311(e)(6)(D)).
If the final value lowers your taxes, the tax commissioner refunds the difference with interest; if it raises them, you get an adjusted bill. Our guide to the bill that can follow an appeal decision covers the timing.
If your appeal is with AppealAlly's Full-Service Appeal, our part is the appeal itself (we file it and handle the county for you), and the tax bill and any refund stay between you and your tax commissioner.
If your 2026 notice showed an estimated tax, that figure used a prior-year millage rate or an estimated rollback rate, not the rates adopted for 2026, so your bill can differ from it. Some 2026 notices show no estimate at all.
Senate Bill 566, which applies to tax years starting in 2026, took the estimated tax and the estimated rollback rate out of what the annual notice must show. It also added a line for the estimated tax savings from your exemptions, credits and preferential assessments, figured at the previous year's millage rates. See our line-by-line guide to the assessment notice and how millage rates are set and why they change.
In Fulton County, the 2026 bills themselves are temporary, based on the preliminary 2026 tax digest and each taxing jurisdiction's 2025 millage rate, as authorized by the Superior Court of Fulton County. Once millage rates are set, the county says it will issue a refund or revised bill only as needed. That's separate from an appeal's temporary bill.
Start with your tax bill, then your county tax commissioner's website or office. The Georgia Department of Revenue's county property tax facts pages tell taxpayers to check with the county tax commissioner's office, and a county's page there lists its tax commissioner's website.
If your mortgage company pays your taxes from escrow, don't assume it has the bill. Gwinnett County's tax commissioner, for one, says it doesn't send tax bills to mortgage companies, and that making sure the taxes are paid is ultimately the owner's responsibility. Ask your lender, and see our guide to property taxes in a mortgage escrow account.
This article is general information drawn from public sources: the Georgia Department of Revenue, each listed county's own bill page, O.C.G.A. 48-5-24 and 48-5-311, and Senate Bill 566. It's current as of September 29, 2026, when we read each county's page; all dates are estimated, and county practice varies. It's not legal or tax advice. Your tax bill and your county tax commissioner's office have the dates that apply to you.