LA County Property Tax Estimator

Los Angeles County has no single property tax rate. Every parcel sits in a Tax Rate Area, and its rate is the 1% general levy plus the voter-approved debt service in that area. This estimator uses 1.25% when you do not know yours. That is our planning assumption and not a published county average: no office publishes one, and your parcel's rate may differ from it enough to matter. If you have a tax bill, the rate printed on it is your real one, and the tool will use that instead.

The 1% is the part that is the same everywhere in California. What varies is the voter-approved debt service on top of it: school and community college bonds, water and sanitation districts, and the rest. That is why a house in one neighborhood pays a different rate from an identical house two miles away, and why the rate printed on your own bill beats any average.

Three parts. The assessed value, which for a recent purchase is what you paid. The tax rate, which is the 1% general levy plus your area's voted debt. And the direct assessments, which are flat dollar charges rather than a percentage.

Direct assessments are flat dollar charges rather than a percentage of value: Mello-Roos in districts that have one, and the smaller line items for lighting, sewer, flood control and the rest. They are listed separately on the bill and they are not in this estimate, so a real bill is this figure plus whatever those come to on your parcel. They are printed on the secured bill itself.

Because the taxable value is what the owner paid, not what the house is worth. A purchase resets it; after that it can rise by no more than 2% a year however far the market runs ahead. A neighbor who bought in 1994 and a buyer who closed last month own the same house and are taxed on two different numbers, and both are correct. Prop 13 explained is the whole of that rule.

This is also why an estimate built on your purchase price is only right while that price is recent. If you have owned the place for years, enter the assessed value from your tax bill instead: your base year value has been trending up by up to 2% a year since you bought, so the price you paid is no longer the figure the county taxes. When a property is reassessed covers what restarts it.

The homeowner's exemption takes $7,000 off the assessed value of a home you live in, not $7,000 off the bill. That is about $87.50 a year. You have to claim it: the county does not apply it for you when you buy.

The claim goes to the Assessor, the deadline for the full amount is February 15, and once it is granted it stays until you stop qualifying. Nobody sends a reminder. The homeowner's exemption in LA County is how to check whether yours is on the bill and what to do if it never was.

A purchase resets the assessed value, and the supplemental bill is the catch-up between the old value and yours, charged on the difference and prorated from the first day of the month after you bought through the end of the fiscal year on June 30. Buy between January 1 and May 31 and there are two of them: one for the rest of that fiscal year and one for the whole of the next. Buy between June 1 and December 31 and there is generally one. It arrives separately from the annual bill, and it is the bill buyers are most often not expecting.

The estimator works it out if you tell it what the property was assessed at before you bought, which is on the Assessor's parcel record and often in the escrow paperwork. Without that figure it shows the formula rather than a number, because the alternative is treating the seller's value as zero and turning a catch-up into a second full year's tax. Your first-year supplemental tax bill has the month-by-month table.

It also matters to the monthly figure. A lender's escrow is usually set up from the annual bill, so a supplemental notice often arrives as a separate demand that the escrow account was never funded for.

The county's fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30, and the annual bill is paid in two installments. The first is due November 1 and is delinquent after December 10. The second is due February 1 and is delinquent after April 10. A late installment carries a penalty, so the two dates to remember are December 10 and April 10 rather than the due dates themselves.

A supplemental bill has its own due dates, printed on the notice. It is not part of the annual installments and paying the annual bill does not cover it.

Three things make a real bill differ from this figure, and the result names all three where they apply. Your rate is specific to your Tax Rate Area and we use a planning assumption unless you enter the real one. Direct assessments are dollars on your parcel and we cannot know them. And a supplemental estimate leaves out a homeowner's exemption you may be entitled to on it, which makes that figure high rather than low. The figures behind the calculation were checked by a CPA on October 16, 2026, each one recorded with the source it came from.

What this is for is a number to plan with, and the parts of the bill nobody tells a buyer about. Before you rely on a figure, the Assessor's parcel record and your own tax bill are the authorities.