Hennepin County, Minnesota property tax

ACS 5-year median real estate taxes paid (table B25103) divided by ACS 5-year median value of owner-occupied housing units (table B25077), county-wide. This is a ratio of two independently estimated medians — not the median of the ratio, and not a rate any parcel is billed. It reflects the actual mix of overlapping districts, exemptions and assessment caps as experienced by owner-occupants, and it lags: a 5-year sample centres about two and a half years before its end date.

Layer 1 of the county property-tax corpus: a MEASURED baseline from ACS 2020-2024 5-year, not a published rate. No statutory rate, assessment ratio or exemption has been collected for these counties yet, so nothing here should be read as what a particular property would be billed.

MINNESOTA DOES NOT TAX MARKET VALUE. The chain is: estimated market value, less market value exclusions (the homestead exclusion, the disabled-veteran exclusion, the agricultural deferrals), giving taxable market value; times the CLASS RATE, giving NET TAX CAPACITY; times the local rate. Every rate printed on a Minnesota bill is a percentage of tax capacity, so Ramsey County's payable-2025 rate of 43.686% is not a 43% property tax — it is 43.686% of 1% of the first $500,000 of a homestead's value. Treating a Minnesota rate as comparable to a rate anywhere else in this corpus is the single easiest way to be wrong by a factor of eighty. THREE STACKED DIVERGENCES, and only the first shows on a rate sheet. The class rate puts commercial-industrial at 2.00% against a homestead's 1.25% at the margin. The state general levy is a real state ad valorem tax that homesteads do not pay at all, adding 28.857% of commercial-industrial tax capacity for payable 2025. And referendum levies are spread against REFERENDUM MARKET VALUE rather than tax capacity, a second base inside the same bill, from which agricultural land and the non-homestead portion of some classes are excluded. THE STATE LEVY IS A FIXED DOLLAR AMOUNT, NOT A RATE. Minn. Stat. 275.025 sets $716,990,000 for commercial-industrial and $41,690,000 for seasonal-recreational, and the commissioner derives the rate by dividing across the statewide base each year. So the rate falls when the base grows, and a year-over-year rate change carries no information about legislative intent. THREE RECEIVED CLAIMS ABOUT MINNESOTA THAT ARE WRONG, all corrected here. It is NOT true that the state has no rate limits — a housing and redevelopment authority levy is capped at 0.0185% of estimated market value, a watershed district general fund at 0.096% or $500,000, and a school referendum allowance per pupil. It is NOT true that no levy limit operates — the general limit chapter is dormant, but the Metropolitan Mosquito Control Commission carries a live year-over-year growth cap. And the Truth in Taxation ratchet does NOT bind everyone: Minn. Stat. 275.065 subd. 6(b) excludes towns and every special district other than regional library and metropolitan districts, and nine enumerated exceptions let a city, county or school district exceed its own proposed levy. CITATION HAZARD: the year-scoped statute editions matter more here than almost anywhere. revisor.mn.gov serves a current edition by default, and 273.13 was amended in 2025, so the class rates and the homestead exclusion parameters on the default page are not necessarily the payable-2025 figures. Use the year-pinned edition path, and prefer the Department's own dated classification-rate table, which states the payable year on its face and carries the two columns that settle the structure — whether each class is subject to the referendum market value tax, and whether it is subject to the state tax.