Whether you are buying your first or fifth property purchase in Montana, how property taxes are assessed and paid is often a source of confusion for buyers.

The basics:

The Dept. of Revenue has a field office in each county responsible for valuing all property except centrally assessed and large industrial properties.

Properties are assessed on a two-year cycle by the state, and do not increase automatically based on the purchase price, which is how many other states assess their taxes.

Property taxes are based on 3 components:

1.  The value of the property

2.  The tax rate on the property

3.  The number of mills applied to the property*

The median property tax in Montana is $1,465.00 per year for a home worth the median value of $176,300.00. Counties in Montana collect an average of 0.83% of a property's assesed fair market value as property tax per year.

Montana is ranked number twenty nine out of the fifty states, in order of the average amount of property taxes collected.  The exact property tax levied depends on the county in Montana the property is located in2

Median taxes by county:

Gallatin County 
$1,889
Tax Assessor 

Park County 
$1,511
Tax Assessor 

Jefferson County 
$1,544
Tax Assessor 

Madison County 
$1,251
Tax Assessor 

Beaverhead County 
$1,311
Tax Assessor 

Lewis and Clark County 
$1,851
Tax Assessor 

Meagher County 
$875
Tax Assessor 

footnotes:

2http://www.tax-rates.org/montana/property-tax