Property Tax Calculator

Tax impact calculator

Your yearly home tax is assessment × mill rate ÷ 1,000. The numbers below start with Colchester's median home and update as you type. Motor-vehicle and business-property taxes are separate and not included.

What each FY 2026-27 rate means for the median home

Median Colchester home: a $198,400 assessment. Your own numbers are in the tiles above. The fixed rows compare against FY 2025-26’s 29.92; the last row uses both rates you set above, so it matches the tiles.

The adopted FY 2026-27 rate, 30.43, is from the town’s budget book for the September 1, 2026 referendum, at which both budgets passed. The July 2026 bills went out at 29.92 before the budget passed; the 0.51-mill difference is billed separately, as a supplemental bill due January 1, 2027 (Board of Selectmen agenda, September 17, 2026). CT OPM’s Mill Rates dataset lists 29.92 for Colchester in FY 2026-27, the rate the first bills used. The two rejected rates are shown as history: they were voted on and did not pass. Estimates cover the real-estate line of a tax bill only. Individual exemptions and credits (veterans, elderly/disabled homeowner programs, etc.) are not reflected. Motor vehicles are billed separately at the same mill rate. This is an estimate for understanding a rate's impact — it is not a bill.

What about the 2026 revaluation?

Colchester is re-appraising every property as of October 1, 2026 — the first time since 2021. The new values first affect the tax bill due in July 2027. This is separate from the yearly budget and mill rate.

Home values have climbed since 2021: the typical Connecticut home is worth about 45% more than in late 2021 (federal house-price index, through mid-2026). So most revaluation notices will show a big jump. A big jump in your assessment does not mean a big jump in your tax bill. When every assessment rises, the mill rate gets cut, because the town can only collect what the approved budget allows. It has happened here before: after Colchester's 2006 revaluation, the grand list rose 41% and the mill rate fell from 32.47 to 23.01. What actually moves your bill is how your home's change compares to the town average — and what happens to the budget.

Uses the assessment from the calculator above (the median Colchester home unless you picked your address or typed your own). The "tax rate" tile assumes all real estate rises by the 45% state average while motor vehicles and business equipment (about 17% of the grand list, and not part of a revaluation) stay flat, with town spending flat: 30.43 ÷ (1 + 0.825 × 0.452) ≈ 22.16 mills. Because that non-real-estate 17% doesn't rise, homes as a group pick up a slightly bigger slice — roughly +5% even for a home exactly at the average — while car taxes fall. The same tilt happened inside real estate at the last revaluation: Colchester's residential values rose about 22.5% in 2021 while commercial rose about 15.8% (CT OPM grand-list components). Individual results vary a lot — but not without limit. Professional assessment standards require revaluations to be uniform (typical homes within roughly 10-15% of the market), so for an ordinary house, market movement alone rarely lands far from the town average: in Westport's 2025 revaluation, values rose about 60% on average, with neighborhood averages between roughly 57% and 66%, and condos moved differently than single-family houses. The homes that swing much harder than that usually changed physically — an addition, major renovation, or new construction. The real FY 2027-28 rate will depend on Colchester's actual 2026 grand list and the budget adopted that year. State average from the FHFA all-transactions house price index for Connecticut, late 2021 to early 2026.

How budget dollars translate to mills

Approximate conversion using the October 1, 2025 net taxable grand list of $1,626,289,612 (CT OPM), the list the FY 2026-27 levy is set against: one mill raises about $1.63M in taxes.

Who pays each levy dollar

The mill rate applies to every property class equally, so each class's share of the grand list is its share of any tax increase. At FY 2025-26’s 29.92 mills the whole list raised roughly $48M a year — about $35M of it from homes and apartments. Shares are approximate (class totals are before some exemptions); October 1, 2024 grand list, CT OPM.

An approximation, in both directions: budget changes are not one-to-one with the tax levy (non-tax revenues, state aid, and fund-balance use also move). Median residential assessment: $198,400, from the October 1, 2024 parcel file, the latest one dated for Colchester; an existing home's assessment does not change between revaluations unless the property itself changes. The class table above shows how each levy dollar splits across homes, vehicles, businesses, and equipment. For scale, the adopted +0.51 mills over 29.92 corresponds to roughly $0.8M more raised by taxes, and the rejected July 28 proposal’s +1.05 mills to roughly $1.7M.