Franklin County, Ohio property tax
What owner-occupants in Franklin County (population 1,356,303) report paying, measured by the Census Bureau, and the Ohio law that decides how a bill is built.
Provisional This is a measured outcome, not a rate anyone is billed. Property tax here is levied by overlapping county, city, school and special districts, so two homes in Franklin County with the same value can owe different amounts. A levied county rate has not been collected yet.
What homeowners report paying
- Surveyed effective rate
- 1.47%
- ±0.03% at 90% confidence (1.44% to 1.50%).
- Median annual tax bill
- $4,244
- ±$68 at 90% confidence ($4,176 to $4,312).
- Median home value
- $288,400
- ±$2,726 at 90% confidence ($285,674 to $291,126).
Coefficient of variation 0.01: a tight estimate by Census standards.
Among the 88 Ohio counties with a point estimate, Franklin County ranks 9 from the highest. The middle Ohio county sits at 1.05%. Neighbouring ranks are often inside each other’s margin of error, so read a rank as a neighbourhood, not a position.
How this is measured
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.
How Ohio builds a property tax bill
- Value taxed
- Current market value
- Reassessment
- Every 6 years
- Who assesses
- The county assessor
- Lien date
- January 1 · Tax year 2025, collected in calendar 2026
- Assessment of owner-occupied homes
- 35% of market value
- Assessment of commercial property
- 35% of market value
- County government levies
- Yes
- Business personal property
- Not taxed
Commercial versus residential
- Residential and commercial rates drift apart through per-class levy reductions (R.C. 319.301(C)-(D), with the classes defined at R.C. 5713.041).
Limits
- Rate limit of 1.000% of assessed value (owner-occupied homes, other residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural).
- A jurisdiction's total levy may grow at most 0.0% a year, new construction excluded.
Exemptions and relief
| Program | Amount | Reaches |
|---|---|---|
| Homestead exemption, 65+ or disabled (R.C. 323.152(A)) | $29,000 | all levies · statewide |
| Homestead exemption, disabled veteran or surviving spouse of a public service officer | $58,000 | all levies · statewide |
| Non-business credit (R.C. 319.302) | 10% of value | all levies · statewide |
| Owner-occupancy credit (R.C. 323.152(B)) | 3% of value | all levies · statewide |
Notes on Ohio law
Ohio has no rate to quote. R.C. 319.301(F) is explicit that the reduction is to the sum charged and not to any rate, so "effective millage" is a figure the state derives and publishes rather than one anybody adopts. Quoting voted millage instead would overstate a residential bill by around 58% at the median district. The residential/commercial divergence is EMERGENT rather than legislated, which is why it needed its own branch of the divergence union. Both classes are assessed at 35%; each carries its own HB 920 reduction factor; and because residential value has outrun commercial since 1976, Class I is reduced harder. Three properties follow that a consumer must not assume away. The gap drifts annually rather than being set. It can invert, and does in 67 of 4,479 districts. And it stops entirely where the R.C. 319.301(E)(2) floor binds, which it does for 369 of 611 school districts on the Class I side. The credits are not exemptions from value. The 10% non-business and 2.5% owner-occupancy credits apply only to the QUALIFYING subset of levies — broadly those approved before 29 September 2013 — so a flat multiplier over the whole effective rate is wrong, and the qualifying millage is published as its own column for exactly that reason. All three reliefs, including the homestead exemption, are reimbursed to counties from the state general revenue fund under R.C. 323.156. Two citation hazards on Ohio hosts. Bare codes.ohio.gov section URLs now serve POST-tax-year-2025 text, because 2025-26 legislation (HB 96, HB 129, HB 186, HB 479) has already amended several of these sections — R.C. 319.302 in particular now shows the 10% credit being phased to zero, which is 2026 law and not this record's year, so version-pinned URLs are used where it matters. And tax.ohio.gov both answers 404 to a non-browser client at its own origin AND serves soft-404s: HTTP 200 with a body reading "No content found". Content assertions rather than status codes are the only defence against the second.
Ohio law record: tax year 2025, official, verified 2026-08-03.
Sources & Trust
Each source is rated by what published it. The Census is authoritative about what households reported and silent about any rate, which is why it sits at tier 2.
The measurement
- Tier 2 · Official, not operativewww2.census.govACS 2020-2024 5-year, table B25103 — Mortgage Status by Median Real Estate Taxes Paid
Checked 2026-08-03
- Tier 2 · Official, not operativewww2.census.govACS 2020-2024 5-year, table B25077 — Median Value of Owner-Occupied Housing Units
Checked 2026-08-03
Ohio law
- Tier 1 · Primary authoritycodes.ohio.govOhio R.C. 319.301 — tax reduction factors for carryover property (HB 920)
Checked 2026-08-03
- Tier 1 · Primary authoritycodes.ohio.govOhio Adm. Code 5703-25-05 — classification and valuation of real property
Checked 2026-08-03
- Tier 1 · Primary authoritycodes.ohio.govOhio R.C. 5713.041 — classifying property for purposes of tax reduction
Checked 2026-08-03
- Tier 1 · Primary authoritycodes.ohio.govOhio R.C. 323.08 — publication of the tax rates and effective rates
Checked 2026-08-03
- Tier 1 · Primary authoritycodes.ohio.govOhio R.C. 5705.02 — the ten-mill limitation
Checked 2026-08-03
- Tier 1 · Primary authoritycodes.ohio.govOhio R.C. 5711.22 — listing percentages for personal property
Checked 2026-08-03
- Tier 1 · Primary authoritydam.assets.ohio.govOhio DoT — 2025 Aggregate Property Tax Rates by Taxing District
Checked 2026-08-03