Writing about the calculation of property taxes is not my favorite thing. It’s a difficult subject that is perplexing to people like me, who are better at English than they are at math.
Having said that, I’m going to give it a try because a symbolic bomb will go off in the Pike County courthouse when homeowners get their 2026 property tax bill in a few weeks and see that it includes a large increase.
As I understand it, this is occurring because of an unusually steep increase in the assessed values of homes in the county. The reason for this is changes to tax-calculation guides compiled by the Mississippi Department of Revenue.
There was a simple way to avoid a large residential tax increase: Reduce the number of mills used to calculate each parcel’s tax bill.
Unfortunately, the county was too late to recognize the problem and lower its millage rate. If it’s true that residential property taxes will rise 10% to 15% next year, public officials are going to hear about it.
“What’s going on here?” homeowners will demand. The answer, I fear, is that the ticking of the upcoming bomb got overlooked.
For example, in July Tax Assessor Laurie Allen reportedly gave the board information on the total value of all property for 2026. It was an increase of $37 million, a little more than 10 percent, from the current year. But $33 million of that was due to increases in the value of residential property.
One way to look at this is to ask if Allen broke down the property value changes for the supervisors by classification, as in residential, commercial, public utilities and so on.
Another way is to ask if the supervisors just accepted the total increase without asking for more details, such as which classifications of property were rising in value. They had to be happy with the big increase in property values, because it meant they wouldn’t have to raise taxes.
Well, they didn’t change the millage rate, but many residential taxes are going up because they didn’t lower it. Had the supervisors realized what was going to happen if the millage was left unchanged, they never would have approved.
The problem of excess revenue became evident this month, and last Monday, former supervisor and county administrator Chuck Lambert told the board it was too late to adjust the budget or tax rates.
He said the board would have had to advertise its new budget twice and also hold public hearings on it, and there was no way to get all that done to meet state deadlines on the budget.
Lambert is a smart guy, so I feel guilty second-guessing what he told the board. But I wonder if all those rules are designed to publicize tax increases. In Pike County’s case, supervisors needed to reduce property tax revenue. Who’s going to object to that?
If the board had voted Monday to reduce the tax rate by 2 or 3 mills from what it originally advertised, what would have happened?
Would it have been legal? I honestly don’t know. Would it have been politically wise? Yes, indeed.
If the supervisors had approved a different budget, with less local revenue, than the one it originally advertised, would the Department of Revenue really have marched into the courthouse? I think they have other things to do than get after officials who recognized a mistake very late in the game and tried to fix it.
But Lambert probably was right. At least more right than my wishful thinking. There have to be other issues in play of which I’m not aware.
If there is a bright side, the tax millage should go down in 2027 to fix this problem. And some new, large commercial buildings will produce extra tax revenue.
But the next few months? That noise you hear in Magnolia will be coming from homeowners at the courthouse.
