Upper Cumberland property owners will begin receiving their 2026 tax bills this month.
Putnam County Property Assessor Steve Pierce said the county tax roll includes approximately 48,000 parcels of real and personal property. Pierce said the reappraisal process has already generated lots of citizen discussion.
“We’ve done a bunch of that work this year already, so I anticipate probably some questions every year, but I just don’t think there’ll be as many this year because of all the effort we put into it trying to make everyone aware what’s going on,” Pierce said.
Pierce said residential property values increased by an average of 69 percent while commercial properties rose by approximately 74 percent. He said the tax rate was reduced by about one dollar and five cents to offset these increases.
“There will be some that will pay some more taxes and there will be some that’ll pay less, or pay some will pay about the same,” Pierce said. “Anyone above those their property went up above that average they will pay some more taxes, anybody below that will pay the same or less taxes.”
Pierce said Tennessee is a fractional assessment state where residential property is assessed at 25 percent of its appraised value and commercial property at 40 percent.
“We’re just at the point with reappraisal this year we’ve tried to put a lot of information out, have put a lot of information out, had a lot of discussions with a lot of taxpayers,” Pierce said. “Hopefully that we’ve answered their questions, hope we have and tried to, there’s we’re limited this point in time to what we can and can’t change on record cards.”
Pierce said property owners received change of value notices in May and had the opportunity to appeal through the County Board of Equalization. He said while the deadline for subjective appeals has passed, the office can still correct clear-cut errors throughout the year.
“I appreciate that, we try to be open transparent what we do and I hope everyone sees it, hope everybody got their questions answered ahead of time and I appreciate you doing a story on it,” Pierce said. “It’s always good to put transparent good news out for people.”
Pierce said the most common inquiries following the mailing of bills typically involve address changes or missing statements.
