{"id":139376,"date":"2026-03-16T04:41:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T04:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/139376\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T04:41:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T04:41:07","slug":"post-reassessment-tax-rates-cratered-as-expected-in-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/139376\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-reassessment tax rates cratered as expected in county"},"content":{"rendered":"

Property tax rates in Lackawanna County municipalities cratered when new, higher assessments calculated during the county\u2019s first reassessment since 1968 took effect this year.<\/p>\n

While that was the expected result of the reassessment process that by law has to be revenue neutral for taxing bodies, a county- published list of 2026 municipal tax rates<\/a> shows just how precipitous the rate drops were. Tax rates are expressed in mills, a mill being a $1 tax on every $1,000 of assessed property value.<\/p>\n

Among other examples, the municipal millage rate in Dunmore dropped with reassessment from 54 mills last year to just 3.2 mills this year. In Carbondale, the city\u2019s rate fell from 34 to 2.1 mills. Jessup\u2019s borough tax rate fell from 21.7 to 1.81 mills.<\/p>\n

Blakely doesn\u2019t levy a borough property tax, so reassessment didn\u2019t impact a municipal rate there.<\/p>\n

But the county\u2019s 2026 tax rate plunged, too, from 89.98 mills to just 5.79 mills. And the rates set by school districts will also drop dramatically when those districts adopt budgets and set millage rates for the next fiscal year.<\/p>\n

The Scranton School District, the lone district in the county to operate on a calendar year budget as opposed to a traditional July-to-June school district fiscal year, adopted a 2026 budget in December with a reassessment-adjusted tax rate of 9.5585 mills. That\u2019s down considerably from 147.85 mills in 2025.<\/p>\n

Why the drops?<\/p>\n

The revenue-neutral requirement of reassessment guarantees municipalities and other taxing bodies collect essentially the same amount of property tax revenue after reassessment as they did before. Simply put, that means tax rates must fall as assessed property values used to calculate tax bills rise.<\/p>\n

They rose substantially in Lackawanna County, which hadn\u2019t reassessed since the last year of Lyndon Baines Johnson\u2019s presidency, because reassessment is designed to bring assessed values in line with market values and properties cost much more on the real estate market now than they did in 1968.<\/p>\n

But lower tax rates may not translate to lower tax bills for individual property owners, just as higher assessed values don\u2019t necessarily mean higher tax bills. A general rule of thumb is that about a third of tax bills increase with reassessment, a third decrease and a third remain the same.<\/p>\n

A hypothetical Jessup homeowner assessed at $10,000 before reassessment would have paid $217 in borough property taxes last year under the 2025 tax rate of 21.7 mills. If that same homeowner was reassessed at $150,000, they\u2019d owe $271.50 this year under the reassessment-adjusted rate of just 1.81 mills.<\/p>\n

The same hypothetical homeowner would have owed $899.80 in county taxes last year, compared to $868.50 this year.<\/p>\n

The reassessment\u2019s overall impact on individual property tax burdens will vary.<\/p>\n

The full list of reassessment-adjusted municipal tax rates is available online at lackawannacounty.org by clicking the \u201cAssessment\u201d<\/a> link under the \u201cGovernment\u201d tab at the top of the site. It\u2019s specifically available under the \u201cAssessment Information\u201d drop-down list by clicking \u201c2026 Lackawanna County Millage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Monday Update<\/p>\n

THEN: Lackawanna County\u2019s first reassessment since 1968 took effect this year.<\/p>\n

NOW: Municipal tax rates fell as expected as assessments rose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Property tax rates in Lackawanna County municipalities cratered when new, higher assessments calculated during the county\u2019s first reassessment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[60,201,182,139,28,1081,178,180,179,181],"class_list":["post-139376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-business","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-real-estate","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-top-stories-stt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}