What happens after you file a Georgia property tax appeal: the assessors' review, the notices, the Board hearing, the temporary bill and your next step.
# Georgia Property Tax Appeal Timeline: What Happens Next
After you file a Georgia property tax appeal, the timeline starts with the county board of tax assessors, and Georgia law sets 180 days from the day they receive your appeal for their review, with more time possible in counties with heavy appeal volume. If they change your value and you disagree, you have 30 days from the change notice's mailing date, a window state law sets, to continue your appeal in writing; if you chose the Board of Equalization and they make no change, their no-change notice sends your appeal on to the Board.
Once the Board of Equalization receives your appeal, Georgia law requires it to set a hearing date within 15 days and to hold the hearing 20 to 30 days after you're notified. Several months can pass inside the 180-day window Georgia law sets for the assessors.
The table below lists the main clocks, and the steps after it explain each one. Confirm with your county before you file.
Each clock below is a window Georgia law sets. The Board's clocks start when the Board receives your appeal, not when you filed it.
Confirm with your county before you file.
Georgia law sets the appeal deadline at 45 days from the date your annual assessment notice was mailed, and you file with your county board of tax assessors. Georgia's Department of Revenue provides the statewide PT-311A Appeal of Assessment Form, and a written objection that names the property also counts as an appeal. The date printed on your notice controls.
When you file, you also choose where your appeal goes if the assessors don't resolve it: the county Board of Equalization, arbitration or, for some property, a hearing officer. Our guide on how to fill out the PT-311A covers the form itself.
To confirm your appeal is on file, keep proof of the date you sent it. A mailed appeal counts as filed on its postmark date, and if your county's assessors accept appeals by email, keep the sent message.
What you should do right away:
Confirm with your county before you file.
After you file, the county board of tax assessors reviews your appeal, and this is the quiet period. The assessors have 180 days from the day they receive your appeal, a period state law sets, to tell you either that they made no change or what they changed, and counties with heavy appeal volume can get more time (O.C.G.A. § 48-5-311).
State law sets an additional 180-day review period that a county's assessors can be granted when the number of appeals equals at least 3 percent of the county's parcels, or the appealed value equals at least 3 percent of the county's gross tax digest. Georgia law requires the assessors to notify each affected taxpayer at least 30 days before the first 180 days run out.
DeKalb County, for example, posted a notice that its board of assessors was granted the additional period for 2025 appeals. That notice covers 2025 appeals only, so check your own county's page for this year.
If the review period, or an extended one you were notified about, passes with no notice, write to the board of tax assessors to ask the appeal's status.
Confirm the dates on your county's letter.
Once the Board of Equalization receives your appeal, it must set a hearing date within 15 days, the period Georgia law sets, and notify you and the assessors in writing. The hearing itself comes no sooner than 20 days and no later than 30 days after you're notified, as state law requires. These clocks are statewide law, and they start when the Board receives the appeal, not when you filed it, so the assessors' review comes first.
Athens-Clarke County's appeal hearing page gives the same timing Georgia law sets: notice within 15 days of the Board's receipt, and a hearing 20 to 30 days after the notice goes out.
Confirm the dates on your county's letter.
Before the hearing, you finish your own evidence and can see the evidence the assessors plan to use.
Either side can ask in writing for the other's witnesses and documents, and Georgia law requires the request at least 10 days before the hearing and the material at least 7 days before it. This applies to Board of Equalization hearings, and the Department of Revenue's rule for those hearings (Rule 560-11-12) says the same.
You can also ask the assessors for the public records and information behind your value, and they must provide copies within ten business days (O.C.G.A. § 48-5-306). Read your hearing notice for any instructions about when and how to send your own evidence.
Confirm the dates on your county's letter.
At the hearing, the deciding body hears the evidence and then decides your value. The Board of Equalization, a hearing officer, or an arbitrator can lower your value but cannot raise it above what the county assessors set (O.C.G.A. § 48-5-311(e)(9)), except on an appeal filed while a 299(c) freeze from an earlier appeal is in effect. A 299(c) freeze is a hold on a value lowered by an earlier appeal; the freeze section below explains it.
At a Board of Equalization hearing, both you and the assessors' office can present evidence. Athens-Clarke County's Board of Equalization page describes a Board that "hears evidence from both the taxpayer and the Tax Assessors Office" before it decides.
If you're handling the appeal yourself, attend the hearing in whatever format your county offers and give the Board written evidence of your value. The freeze section below explains why doing both matters.
Hearing officer appeals are not the typical homeowner path; they're limited and depend on property type and value. If you chose this track, follow the instructions in your notices closely.
Arbitration decides disputes over value only. If you chose it, follow the instructions in each letter the county sends you.
If your county sends tax bills before your appeal is decided, you get a temporary bill, and it comes with a notice that it's temporary pending the outcome of your appeal. In most cases it's based on the lower of last year's final value or 85% of this year's value. Our guide to how Georgia's temporary tax bill is figured covers the exceptions.
Pay the temporary bill on time. Gwinnett County's tax commissioner, for example, says the pending appeal bill must be paid by the date shown on the bill to avoid penalties and interest.
Once the appeal ends, your taxes follow the final value. If the final value lowers your taxes, Georgia law requires the tax commissioner to refund the difference, with interest, within 60 days of the final determination of value. If it raises them, you get an adjusted bill, and state law sets 60 days from its postmark to pay it in full. That's because the temporary bill was, in most cases, figured on that lower base.
If you disagree with a Board of Equalization, hearing officer or arbitrator decision, Georgia law sets 30 days from the date the decision is delivered to take it to superior court, by mailing or filing a written petition for review with the county board of tax assessors. Either side can file one.
Our guide to what a Board decision means and what comes next covers the petition, your tax bill and next year's appeal.
Confirm the dates on your county's letter.
Georgia's three-year freeze applies only if the value is reduced. When an appeal lowers your home's value, by a Board, hearing officer, arbitrator or court decision, or by a written agreement signed by the assessors and you or your authorized agent, Georgia law bars the assessors from raising that lower value for the next two years, subject to the statutory exceptions (O.C.G.A. § 48-5-299). The appeal year plus those two years is why people call it a three-year freeze.
A no-change result, whether from the assessors or the Board, starts no hold. HB 581 deleted "or is unchanged" from the statute, so an unchanged value no longer qualifies.
A value set by an appeal decision also carries no hold if the owner or the owner's authorized agent "failed to attend the appeal hearing or provide the board of equalization, hearing officer, or arbitrator with some written evidence supporting the taxpayer's opinion of value." If you're handling the appeal yourself, do both: attend in whatever format your county offers, and send written evidence of your value.
Filing a new appeal during the two years can end the hold early. Chatham County's board of assessors warns that filing an appeal while a 299C freeze is active may result in its removal. The rest of the rules, including the other exceptions, are in our guide to how the freeze works since HB 581.
This article is general information drawn from public sources: O.C.G.A. §§ 48-5-311, 48-5-299 and 48-5-306, the Georgia Department of Revenue's PT-311A page and Board of Equalization hearing rule, and county pages from Athens-Clarke, Chatham, DeKalb and Gwinnett, all read September 29, 2026. The day counts above are periods Georgia law sets; any calendar date that comes from them is estimated, because your county's own notices, hearing schedule and bills set the actual dates, and county practice varies. It isn't legal or tax advice. Confirm your dates on your notice and your tax bill, or with your county's board of tax assessors or tax commissioner.