How much of what a town's residents earn goes to the property tax — and what the tax on a typical home costs against a typical income.
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Each town's whole property-tax levy for — divided by an estimate of everything its residents earn in a year (per-capita income × population). Sorted lowest to highest; rank 1 is the smallest share. Both sides of the division are per-person figures, so no household-versus-person mixing is involved.
Source: tax levy from ct_equalized_rates.json (CT OPM he33-brru, screened); per-capita income and population from the US Census ACS 5-year estimates via ct_town_income.json, table B19301.
Each town's effective tax rate applied to its median home value, divided by its median household income: roughly what share of a typical household's income the tax on a typical house takes, for —. This sidesteps the commercial-property complication above — it prices one home directly. It describes a household that owns the town's median home at the town's median income; any real household differs.
Source: effective rate = levy ÷ equalized (market-value) grand list, from ct_equalized_rates.json; median home value and median household income from the ACS via ct_town_income.json, tables B25077 / B19013. All three are estimates; treat small differences between towns as ties.
All towns with both measures, plus the dollar tax on the median home and the residential share of each town's market-value tax base.
Levy share of income = total tax levy ÷ (ACS per-capita income × ACS population). It answers: of all the income earned by people living in this town, what share does the town's whole property tax equal? It is an aggregate measure — it does not say any individual pays that share, and the part of the levy paid by businesses and non-resident owners is included in the numerator but their income is not in the denominator.
Tax on the median home = (levy ÷ equalized net grand list) × median home value. Using the market-value (equalized) base makes this an effective rate, so it is comparable across towns regardless of when each last revalued. Dividing by median household income turns it into a share of a typical household budget. Median-on-median is an approximation: the household in the median home is not necessarily the household at the median income.
What neither measure counts: motor-vehicle tax paid by residents is inside the levy, but so is tax on business equipment; renters pay property tax only indirectly through rent; and towns with large seasonal populations have summer residents' home values in the base but not their income in the denominator.
More rankings: tax rates · tax base & the four quadrants · state aid