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 is the county settling up, not reversing itself. The bill you paid while your appeal was open was a temporary one, and once your value is final the tax commissioner either refunds the difference with interest or bills you for the rest.
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." That line is easy to miss, so when the board of equalization cuts your value and another envelope arrives from the tax commissioner, it can feel like a reversal.
Whether you get money back or owe more depends on where your final value lands against the value your temporary bill used.
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 give the tax commissioner a temporary value to bill on. In most cases it's the lower of last year's final value or 85 percent of this year's value. If your homestead has had structural improvements, the temporary bill uses 85 percent of this year's value instead.
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.
Your final value lands either below the value you were temporarily billed on or above it. Each produces different mail.
Both periods come from subsection (m) of the same statute. Confirm the due date on your tax bill.
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 illustrative 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.
Gwinnett County's tax commissioner calls that outcome fairly common and explains why: "the initial appeal bills are issued at less than 100% of the current year assessed value."
What shows up is a balance, not a new charge. Cobb County's 2025 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 you'd rather see a refund than a make-up bill next time, you can ask for a bigger temporary bill. A taxpayer may elect to pay the temporary bill at 100 percent of the current year's valuation if no substantial property improvement has occurred, and the tax commissioner can adjust the bill to match. Gwinnett's tax commissioner says you make that request with the Board of Assessors when you file your appeal. Pay on the full value up front and a lower final value comes back as a refund.
The refund goes to whoever paid the taxes, and Georgia law sets 60 days from the final determination of value for the tax commissioner to send it. Subsection (m)(1) says the refund "shall be paid by the tax commissioner to the taxpayer, entity, or transferee who paid the taxes."
Georgia law sets the interest too: it accrues 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. The rate is the one in O.C.G.A. § 48-2-35, which the Georgia Department of Revenue's ADMIN-2026-01 notice puts at 9.75 percent a year, accruing monthly, for calendar year 2026. It's the bank prime loan rate plus 3 percent, so it changes from year to year (it was 10.50 percent in 2025). 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 refund clock waits for a final value, and either side can still take a Board decision further. You or the county board of tax assessors can appeal it to superior court, and Georgia law sets 30 days from the date the decision is delivered to file.
How fast the money moves inside the statute's limit is county practice. 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. Confirm the due date on your tax bill.
Georgia law sets 60 days from the postmark to pay an adjusted bill issued after an appeal, not 60 days from your decision date. Subsection (m)(2) is where Georgia law sets it: 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. Georgia law sets what happens next: 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.
Georgia law sets two different 60-day clocks in subsection (m), 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 itself earns interest. Confirm the due date on your tax bill.
To your servicer. The tax commissioner 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."
Ask your servicer how it will handle that money for your account. The federal escrow rules below cover what happens to a surplus.
The other direction needs more attention. An adjusted bill is payable to the tax commissioner as any other tax due, and Gwinnett's tax commissioner doesn't send mortgage companies a bill directly. It says paying the taxes is the owner's responsibility and warns: "Do not assume that your mortgage company will pay the additional amount due." Send the bill to your servicer and confirm in writing who's paying, well before day 60.
Because your servicer sets the monthly escrow payment at an escrow analysis, and federal rules require that analysis at the end of each escrow account computation year. Regulation X says the servicer must conduct one "at the completion of the escrow account computation year to determine the borrower's monthly escrow account payments for the next computation year."
Federal law requires the servicer to refund a surplus of $50 or more within 30 days of the analysis, as long as you're current on your payments. Below $50, it can refund the money or credit it against next year's escrow payments.
What does help is sending your servicer the decision and the corrected bill. Regulation X says that if the servicer knows the charge for an escrow item in the next computation year, it "shall use that amount in estimating disbursement amounts." Our guide to escrow analysis letters shows what the statement looks like.
Because they come from two different offices. The board of equalization announces your decision at the close of the hearing, puts it in writing signed by each member, and delivers it by hand or by registered or certified mail or statutory overnight delivery. The tax commissioner issues the bill and pays the refund, so the decision letter and the corrected bill travel separately.
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's tax commissioner states both branches: the difference will result in "you being billed for the balance due or you will receive a refund." DeKalb's regular tax bill is due in installments on September 30 and November 15 (estimated; its page doesn't give a year). Those dates aren't for an adjusted bill, which gets the 60 days from its postmark that Georgia law sets. Cobb's 2025 letter says a refund goes to "the original payer," plus interest.
One Fulton-specific thing to keep separate this year: in August 2026 the county got court approval to issue temporary tax bills, figured on 2025 millage rates and the 2026 tax digest assembled so far. Those bills have nothing to do with appeals. They just borrow the word. Confirm the due date on your tax bill.
Match the envelope to one branch and work that branch only.
None of this is complicated once you know which clock you're on, but it's badly signposted: two county offices, two payment clocks, and a servicer that may not know your appeal happened. If you'd rather not track the county's letters and deadlines yourself next time, AppealAlly's Full-Service Appeal files the appeal and tracks them for you. The settle-up bill itself stays between you, your county tax commissioner, and your servicer. Confirm the due date on your tax bill.
If the value is reduced, the win can also carry into the next two years, but it holds the value, not the bill. For your homestead, a lower value set by an appeal decision or a signed agreement can't be raised by the assessors during those two years unless both sides agree otherwise in writing, and a few exceptions apply: a new appeal filed in those years, for example, can move the value up or down. How the 2025 law change reshaped Georgia's 299(c) freeze covers the exceptions.
The bill itself is still figured from that value and each year's millage rate. One mill equals "$1.00 of property taxes for every $1,000 of assessed valuation," as Gwinnett's millage page puts it, so a held value can still bring a different bill if the rates change.
This article is general information drawn from public sources read on September 29, 2026: O.C.G.A. 48-5-311 and 48-5-299, the Georgia Department of Revenue's 2026 interest rate notice, the Gwinnett, DeKalb and Fulton county pages, Cobb County's 2025 letter to taxpayers under appeal, and the federal escrow rule in Regulation X. Dates are estimated, and county practice varies. It is not legal or tax advice. Check your own dates and amounts on your tax bill or with your county tax commissioner's office.