How Does Your Property Tax Bill Compare?

How’s your property tax bill?  If you tell us it’s too high, we won’t argue with you.  In fact, we keep proposing solutions to deliver stronger taxpayer protections.  But property taxes exist to fund our K-12 education system and city and county governments, as well as other services we all have access to; they are never going away.  So maybe the better question is, “How does your bill measure up to everyone else’s?”

The map below shows estimated property taxes based on the consolidated property tax rates for the 150 largest cities in Iowa.  Consolidated rates include city, county, and school district levies, as well as other smaller taxing authorities such as community colleges and county hospitals.

Property tax estimates are provided for homes with assessed values of $153,900 (the median home value in the state), $250,000, and $350,000.  Hover over a city and an estimated total property tax bill will be provided for the three assessed values.

Source: Iowa Department of Management

Maybe you live in the Quad Cities and want to compare Davenport and Bettendorf’s property tax burdens.  Would you be surprised to learn the Davenport resident pays 26% more in property taxes on a home of identical value?

Perhaps you want to compare communities in the Des Moines metro.  Johnston and Urbandale homeowners have nearly identical property tax bills, but people in Des Moines have to pay 17% more than their suburban neighbors.  Des Moines should probably stop making everyone else pick up the tab for the people who own million-dollar homes and drive Teslas.

Or maybe you just want to see how Carroll compares to Denison (Denison costs over 50% more), or how Marshalltown compares to Grinnell (Marshalltown is nearly 20% more expensive).

Whatever conclusions you may draw from this interactive map, ITR Local provides additional information about your community and its property taxes.  We even make it easy for you to contact your local officials so you can start a conversation with the people who are spending your property tax dollars.