Millage Calculator Instructions

General Information

This web page replaces the millage request forms that were mailed out in the past. After choosing your taxing district, you will be presented with a form where you will need to fill in the taxes and millages you are imposing. After filling in the required information, you must print, sign, and seal a copy of the form. Then mail the paper copy to Wayne County Tax Assessment Office, 925 Court St, Honesdale, PA 18431.

Please note that the taxable amounts reflect up to the second numbers based on current assessment data. As such, they may not match the budgetary numbers mailed by the Assessment Office. You are highly encouraged to use the numbers presented here as they will be more accurate.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Draft your budget. You will need to know your revenue requirements before you can calculate your millage(s).
Estimate uncollectible rates. Calculate this number based on your municipality/school district's historical payment rate. more A quick way to estimate this number is to take the prior year's ending taxable amount due from the final tax collector report and divide that number by the starting taxable amount due from the first tax collector's report. This should give you a number somewhere between 0.0 and 0.5 (hopefully closer to 0.0). Multiply that number by 100 to get the uncollectible rate as a percentage. You should calculate a separate percentage for real estate and individual taxes. less
Choose your taxing district. Select your taxing district from the dropdown list and then click on the Submit button (school districts are at the bottom of the list).
Enter uncollectible rates. Enter the uncollectible rates that you already calculated in their respective boxes at the top of the page.
Enter revenue requirements. Enter your revenue requirements in their respective boxes under the Net Tax Income column.
Complete homestead/farmstead section (school districts only).
Review properties subject to special taxes (affected municipalities only).
Print two copies. Keep one for your records and submit the other to the Assessment office.
Sign and seal one copy.
Mail in the signed/sealed copy. Mail to: Wayne County Tax Assessment Office, 925 Court St, Honesdale, PA 18431.

Doing the Math

As you know, (millage-based) taxes are calculated using a simple formula:

Tax Revenue = Assessment � Millage / 1000

By solving this formula for the Millage we see that the millage can be calculated just as easily if we know the amount of taxes we want to end up with:

Millage = Tax Revenue � 1000 / Assessment

However, this formula assumes a 100% payment rate. While a worthy goal, it is likely that the actual payment rate will be less than 100%. If we account for this uncollectible rate (which will vary by municipality/school district and even real estate vs individual taxes) we get:

Millage = Tax Revenue � 1000 / (Assessment � (1 - Uncollectible Rate))

The Millage Calculator handles all of this math in addition to providing you with your latest assessment numbers. All you need to do is enter an estimate of how much of your tax revenue goes uncollected each year, enter the amount of revenue you need to fund your budget, and click the 'Calculate' button.

Real Estate Taxes

Municipalities may enter up to four lines of real estate taxes. If you have more than four separate real estate taxes, you must combine multiple taxes into a single line (the four-line maximum is a limitation of the space available on the printed bills). To delete a tax, simply clear its description and click the 'Calculate' button.

You have the option of specifying the millage amount and letting the web page calculate the expected revenue or entering your required revenue and letting the web page calculate the millage necessary to achieve that amount of revenue. We highly recommend letting the web page calculate your millage for you.

If you choose to let the web page calculate your millage, please be sure to fill in a number greater than 0% in the uncollectible real estate rate box. Otherwise, your municipality will likely fall short of its revenue goals due to unpaid taxes.

Individual Taxes (Per Capita, Occupation)

This section will only be shown for taxing districts that levied one or both of these taxes in the previous year. Taxing bodies that will be implementing either of these taxes for the first time will need to contact the Assessment Office for further instructions.

School districts may impose a $5 per capita tax as provided by the Public School Code, Section 679. In addition, school districts and municipalities may impose up to a $10 shared per capita tax as provided by Act 511, the Local Tax Enabling Act. Because this is a flat rate tax that applies equally to all taxable individuals, there is no option to calculate the taxable amount based on required revenue as there is for most other taxes.

Occupation taxes are imposed based on the occupations of taxpayers on record with the Assessment Office. Different occupations receive different assessments. The total occupation assessment shown in the table is a sum of these current assessments. In this way, the occupation tax is similar to the real estate taxes.

If you choose to let the web page calculate your occupation tax millage, please be sure to fill in a number greater than 0% in the uncollectible individual rate box. Otherwise, your municipality will likely fall short of its revenue goals due to unpaid taxes.

Please keep in mind that individual taxes often carry a higher overhead than real estate taxes. The county shares the cost of printing and mailing real estate bills with municipalities because both county and municipal real estate taxes are printed on the same bill. Since the county does not tax individuals, municipalities are responsible for the full cost of both postage and printing of individual tax bills. Per capita bills are an especially costly form of taxation due to the low maximum tax amount per bill and generally higher uncollectible rate.

Special Taxes (Sewer, Hydrant, Street Lights, Storm Water)

This section will only be shown for taxing districts that levied one or more of these taxes in the previous year.

These taxes are imposed on specific properties within the taxing district based on lists maintained at the County Assessment office. To see a current list of the properties subject to a special tax, click on the underlined name of the special tax. This will open a new window that will list the properties subject to the special tax. If the special tax is based on Improved and/or Unimproved Frontages, these amounts will be included in the detailed listing.

If you have changes to make to the list(s) of affected properties, you must print out the list and make pen and ink changes as necessary. Then fax or mail the updated copy to the Assessment office. Once the Assessment office receives your changes—or there are no changes required to the current listing—you need to print a copy of the list(s), sign and seal it, and mail it to the Assessment office. The Assessment office must have a signed and sealed copy of each list with no pen and ink changes prior to printing the tax bills. This ensures that you are approving the actual data in the Assessment office records and helps reduce the possibility of human error.

Homestead/Farmstead Exclusions

This section is only shown for school districts. It assists with the calculation of the Homestead/Farmstead Exclusion amounts. Computing this amount requires dealing with several issues:

the exclusion(s) is/are only applicable to parcels that meet certain eligibility requirements and apply for the exclusions
homeowners do not receive refunds if the exclusion exceeds their home value
the exclusion is limited to a maximum of 50 percent of the median homestead assessed value
all homeowners in a school district must receive an equal refund amount, but the exclusion is expressed as an assessment reduction not a refund amount

The millage calculator deals with all of these issues. However, keep in mind that as you make changes to your millage it will have an effect on your homestead/farmstead exclusion calculations. This is due to the nature of the homestead/farmstead exclusion law, specifically as it relates to the second and fourth bullets above.

Wayne Highlands & Western Wayne

For school districts entirely contained within Wayne County (Wayne Highlands and Western Wayne), calculating the homestead/farmstead exclusion is a one-step process:

enter the Property Tax Relief Fund amount (ie, the state gaming revenue distribution) into the Target Total Tax Reduction box and click [Calculate]

Other School Districts

For school districts that span multiple counties, the process is not quite so easy (sorry). There are basically two options:

Trial and Error

enter your best guess (based on previous year's amounts, for example) in the Homestead and Farmstead boxes under Per Parcel Assmt Reduction and click [Calculate]
compare the Per Parcel Tax Reduction and Total Tax Reduction values to the values you calculated in your other county(ies)
repeat until the Per Parcel Tax Reduction is equal across all counties and the sum of the Total Tax Reduction across all counties matches the Property Tax Relief Fund amount (ie, the state gaming revenue distribution)

Export and Integrate

click on the Homestead or Farmstead link (both bring up the same page)
click on the link to [Download as Excel-friendly CSV]
open this file and add the data to similar files that you should have received from other school districts
calculate your assessment reduction as you have in the past
enter the Per Parcel Assessment Reductions in their respective boxes on the Homestead/Farmstead form on the Millage Calculator page