Winning your Georgia property tax appeal doesn't end the billing. The county still has to settle up, and that second bill can go either way.
# Your Second Property Tax Bill After a Georgia Appeal
A second property tax bill after a Georgia appeal catches almost everyone off guard, even though state law made the county warn you it was coming. Any temporary tax bill issued while an appeal is pending has to carry a notice saying that "upon resolution of the appeal, there may be additional taxes due or a refund issued." Almost nobody reads that line, so when the board of equalization cuts your value and another envelope arrives from the tax commissioner, it feels like the county reversed itself.
It didn't. The second bill is the county settling up, and it lands three ways: money back to you, a balance due from you, or a wash.
Because the bill you paid during the appeal was a placeholder. When county tax bills go out before an appeal has been finally determined, O.C.G.A. § 48-5-311(e)(6)(D)(iii) has the assessors bill you on the lesser of your prior year's final value or 85 percent of the current year's value. That formula, and why you still have to pay it, is covered in our guide to Georgia's temporary assessment.
Once your value is final, the tax commissioner compares what you were billed against what that value produces. Counties call the result a second bill, an adjusted bill, or a balance due. Same document, and the rule is identical in all 159 Georgia counties, whether or not yours mentions it online.
Your final value lands below the amount you were temporarily billed on, above it, or right on it. Each produces different mail.
The board can cut your value and still land above the number you were billed on. If your county billed you on the temporary basis, the arithmetic runs like this representative example, values only:
You won: the county asked for $400,000 and walked away with $360,000. But you were billed on $300,000, so $60,000 of value never made it onto a bill, and the county bills the difference.
What shows up is a balance, not a new charge. Cobb County's letter to taxpayers under appeal says it plainly: "if a remaining balance is due, you will receive a new bill." Everything you paid on the temporary bill stands.
If another property of yours is still under appeal, you can skip this branch. A taxpayer may elect to be billed at 100 percent of the current year's valuation where no substantial improvement has occurred, and the tax commissioner can adjust the bill to match. Pay the full proposed value up front and a win turns into a refund.
The refund goes to whoever paid the taxes, and the tax commissioner has 60 days from the final determination of value to send it. Subsection (m)(1) names the payee as "the taxpayer, entity, or transferee who paid the taxes," and nothing in it asks you to file a claim first.
Interest rides along, accruing from the due date of the taxable year in question or the date you paid, whichever is later, through the date the final value was determined. For 2026 the Georgia Department of Revenue sets that rate at 9.75 percent, accruing monthly. That interest is capped at $150 for homestead property and $5,000 for nonhomestead, with one exception in your favor: if the county pays after day 60, interest from the sixty-first day forward isn't capped at all.
The clock starts at the final determination of value, which isn't always the day your decision is delivered. Either you or the county board of tax assessors can appeal to superior court within 30 days. For a change of 20 percent or less the assessors must notify the county governing authority, which can vote to prohibit the appeal, so a county appeal on a homeowner-scale win is the exception.
How fast the money moves is county practice, not statute. Gwinnett County returns an overpaid amount to the payer in approximately 4 to 6 weeks, which is Gwinnett's number and not a statewide rule.
An adjusted bill issued after an appeal is interest free for 60 days from the postmark, not from your decision date and not from the date printed on the bill. Subsection (m)(2): after the tax bill notice has been mailed out, "the taxpayer shall be afforded 60 days from the date of the postmark to make full payment of the adjusted bill."
Miss day 60 and the math turns against you retroactively. The bill goes past due, and interest accrues from the original billing due date rather than from day 61, under O.C.G.A. § 48-2-40, without limit. The $150 and $5,000 caps sit on the refund side and don't help here, and the rest of the delinquency machinery attaches: fees, penalties, and collection notices. Keep the envelope.
Two different 60-day clocks live in that subsection, and blurring them is expensive. One belongs to the county (pay the refund, from the final determination of value), one belongs to you (pay the adjusted bill, from the postmark). The refund side has no interest-free window because the refund earns interest instead.
To your servicer. Georgia pays the refund to whoever paid the taxes, so if your escrow account covered the temporary bill, the servicer that wrote the check gets the money back. Gwinnett County states it in as many words: "if the initial bill was paid by a third party, such as a mortgage company, they will receive the refund."
The money isn't lost. It lands in your escrow account and surfaces as a surplus at the next escrow analysis. It won't arrive as a check in your mailbox, which is why escrowed homeowners wait months for nothing.
The other direction needs more attention. An adjusted bill is payable to the tax commissioner as any other tax due, and your servicer isn't necessarily expecting a second disbursement on a property it already paid this year. Send it over and confirm in writing who's paying, well before day 60.
Your servicer only resets the payment at an escrow analysis, and federal rules require one just once a year. Regulation X has the servicer run an analysis at the completion of each escrow account computation year, and nothing in it forces a mid-year recomputation because a property tax amount changed.
When that analysis shows a surplus of $50 or more and you're current on your payments, the servicer has to refund it within 30 days of the analysis date. Below $50, it can refund or credit the money against next year's escrow payments.
A servicer may run an analysis at other points in the year, but it isn't required to, so ask rather than demand. What does bind is sending the decision and the corrected bill: once a servicer knows the charge for the next computation year, it has to use that amount instead of estimating from last year's. If the account is genuinely wrong, the lever is a written information request or notice of error under the federal servicing rules. Our guide to escrow analysis letters shows what the statement looks like.
Three different offices produce them on three schedules. The board of equalization announces your decision at the close of the hearing, puts it in writing signed by all three members, and delivers it by hand or by registered or certified mail. The board of tax assessors certifies the value, and the tax commissioner issues the bill and pays the refund.
Nothing synchronizes them, so a corrected bill can beat the decision letter into your mailbox. When two documents seem to disagree, the decision sets your value and the tax commissioner's bill is what you pay, so check the dates before assuming something got reversed. If you're still waiting on the decision, the appeal timeline covers what comes before this point.
The statute does. What varies is how much your county explains and how quickly it moves.
Gwinnett says flatly that you'll receive a second bill once the appeal is final, and that it "may result in a refund or an additional amount due." DeKalb states both branches and bills in two installments due September 30 and November 15. Fulton's appeal guidance tells you to pay the temporary bill and says nothing about what follows; Chatham's guidance is silent on the same point. Neither silence changes the statute.
One Fulton-specific thing to keep separate this year: in August 2026 the county got court approval to issue temporary tax bills to every property owner because its 2026 digest wasn't complete. Those bills have nothing to do with appeals. They just borrow the word.
Match the envelope to one branch and work that branch only.
A win can also lock your value going forward, which our guide to the 299(c) freeze covers.
None of this is complicated once you know which clock you're on, but it's badly signposted: three offices, two 60-day windows, and a servicer with no idea your appeal happened. If you'd rather not run the next one yourself, the Full-Service Appeal covers filing through the hearing and follow-up for 30 percent of first-year savings with $0 upfront. The settle-up bill stays between you, your county, and your servicer.