Lackawanna County Commissioners formally introduced their 2026 budget on Wednesday, proposing a new, lower tax rate to correspond with the higher property values developed during the recent reassessment. This new rate finally allows property owners to calculate the precise impact of the county's first reassessment in 60 years on their individual tax bills for the coming year.
The reassessment was undertaken to bring property values closer to their real market value, as the previous assessment figures had not been updated in six decades.
The almost $180.7 million budget, assuming the commissioners adopt it at their December 3rd meeting, will set the 2026 tax rate at 5.79 mills. This is a necessary reduction from the old rate of 89.98 mills, which was used under the previous, outdated property values.
The millage rate was required to drop because the total assessed value of all properties increased substantially. State law mandates that counties cannot generate more total revenue using new values from a reassessment than they collected under the previous values. The new tax rates and values will take effect on January 1, 2026.
To estimate their county property tax bill for 2026, Lackawanna County residents need to use the standard property tax calculation formula with two critical pieces of information: their new assessed property value and the new proposed county millage rate of 5.79 mills. The core calculation is to multiply the new assessed value by the new millage rate, and then divide the result by 1,000. For example, if a property's new value is $\$245,000$, the estimated county tax bill would be calculated as $(\$245,000 imes 5.79) / 1,000$, resulting in a tax of $\$1,418.55$. Residents should obtain their new assessed value from the official valuation notice they received from the county. By performing this calculation for 2026 and comparing it to their 2025 bill (using the old value and the old 89.98 mill rate), residents can determine if their county tax liability will go up, down, or stay about the same due to the reassessment. It is important to remember that this estimate covers only the county portion of the property tax; residents must repeat this process for their municipal and school district taxes once those taxing bodies adopt their own new, lower millage rates.