Stark County Property Tax Guide: Rates by School District, How to Calculate Your Bill, and How to Appeal (2026)

Stark County property taxes range from 36.66 mills in Marlington LSD to 56.47 mills in Massillon CSD. On a $200,000 home, that spread works out to nearly $1,400 per year. The school district you land in affects your long-term housing costs more than almost any single factor, and most buyers don’t get a clear picture of the actual numbers until they’re already under contract. This guide gives you that picture before you need it.

All rate data comes from the Stark County Auditor‘s CAMA records, 2025 tax year. Market figures are from Stark County MLS data, March 2026.

Last updated: 2026-06-04.

How Property Taxes Work in Stark County

Ohio sets residential assessed value at 35% of market value. A $250,000 home is assessed at $87,500 on paper. Then mill rates apply against that assessed value. One mill equals $1 per $1,000 of assessed value.

The effective mill rates the county publishes apply to that taxable value, not to your purchase price. The Stark County Treasurer’s rate sheet states it directly: rates are expressed per $1,000 of taxable valuation. So the calculation runs in two steps: multiply your purchase price by 0.35 to get taxable value, then multiply by the effective rate. A $250,000 home in Jackson Township carries $87,500 of taxable value, and at 46.93 mills that’s about $4,106 per year, roughly $342 a month sitting on top of your principal and interest payment. Worth knowing before you fall in love with a house.

Two mistakes throw off most online estimates. The first is applying effective mills straight to the full market value, which produces a bill nearly three times too high; if a calculator tells you a $200,000 Stark County home owes $9,400 a year, it made this mistake, because real bills on homes at that price run in the low $3,000s. The second is using the gross voted millage instead of the effective rate; Ohio’s HB 920 reduction factors knock the gross rate down substantially, so gross-rate estimates overshoot too. The figures throughout this guide use effective rates on taxable value, before the non-business and owner-occupancy credits that trim owner-occupied bills a bit further. When you want an exact number for a specific parcel, use the Stark County Auditor’s own tax estimator.

Tax Rates by School District

Your school district determines the majority of your property tax bill. Effective mill rates across Stark County’s 17 districts range from 36.66 mills (Marlington LSD) to 56.47 mills (Massillon CSD), a spread that produces nearly $1,400 in annual tax difference on the same $200,000 home. Here are all 17 districts sorted from highest to lowest.

Source: Stark County Auditor CAMA, 2025 tax year. Rates shown are mean effective rates across all sub-districts within each school district boundary. Actual rates within a district can vary substantially: Plain LSD, for instance, ranges from 35.1 to 60.4 mills depending on the specific municipality and township combination. For the exact rate on any parcel, search at realestate.starkcountyohio.gov.

What You’ll Actually Pay

On Stark County’s March 2026 median sale price of $210,000, your annual tax bill ranges from roughly $2,695 (Marlington LSD) to $4,151 (Massillon CSD) before credits. Buyers shopping in Jackson Township or Lake Township face medians around $360,000, where the spread gets wider. The table below shows realistic tax costs at four price points across the four districts that cover most of the primary buyer market.

Buying in Plain Township instead of Massillon on a $350,000 home saves $1,816 a year in taxes. That’s not a minor variable. At a 6.5% 30-year rate, that $1,816 a year carries the principal and interest on roughly $24,000 of additional borrowing. Property taxes should be part of your neighborhood comparison from day one, not a number you look at after you’ve made an emotional decision about a specific house.

The 6-Year Reappraisal Cycle

Stark County completed its most recent full reappraisal in 2024, raising residential values approximately 30% countywide (Farmers Advance, Aug. 15, 2024; Stark County Auditor). That increase does not mean a 30% tax increase. Ohio’s House Bill 920 requires mill rates to roll back when appraisal values rise across the board, which prevents tax revenue from automatically spiking during reappraisal years. The system isn’t perfect: voter-approved levies still add new mills, and that’s how bills actually grow over time. But HB 920 means the relationship between a higher appraised value and your actual bill isn’t as direct as you’d expect.

What this means if you’re buying now: you’re buying at values that already reflect the 2024 reappraisal. If the Auditor’s current figure is close to your purchase price, the estimates in this guide will be accurate. If you’re buying well above or below the Auditor’s value, check the specific parcel before you finalize your budget. The Auditor’s appraised value for any address in Stark County is publicly searchable at no cost.

How to Appeal Your Assessment

If the Stark County Auditor’s appraised value on your property is higher than you think is accurate, you can challenge it. File a complaint with the Board of Revision (BOR) between January 1 and March 31 each calendar year. That window is firm. Miss it and you’re waiting another twelve months.

Use form DTE 1, which is available from the Auditor’s website. The evidence you bring matters more than most people realize. A recent arm’s-length sale of the property is the strongest possible argument in Ohio, because courts have consistently treated an unrelated-party sale price as strong proof of market value. If you bought the home recently at fair market, your purchase contract is your best document. An independent appraisal is the next strongest option. Comparable sales you pull yourself carry less weight unless they’re very clean comparisons.

One thing to plan around: you’re limited to one BOR filing per three-year valuation cycle. A failed challenge doesn’t increase your assessment, but it burns your one shot for that cycle. Don’t file speculatively. Have a real case before you use it. Full filing instructions are at starkcountyauditor.org.

The Homestead Exemption

Ohio’s homestead exemption shields $29,000 of your home’s market value from taxation for homeowners who are 65 or older, permanently and totally disabled, or surviving spouses of someone who previously held the exemption. That works out to about $10,150 of taxable value, and at Stark County’s median effective rate of 46.93 mills the exemption saves approximately $476 per year.

New applicants face an income limit: $38,600 for 2025, adjusted annually, per the Stark County Auditor’s homestead program. Homeowners who qualified under the program before 2013 are grandfathered into the older rules with no income cap, as long as they’ve maintained eligibility and kept the exemption active. If you or a parent applied years ago, that status carries forward.

Disabled veterans with a 100% service-connected disability qualify for a separate and more substantial exemption under a different program. The documentation requirements differ from the standard homestead form, so contact the Auditor’s office directly if that applies. Don’t use the online form; it isn’t set up to handle that filing. Applications for any homestead exemption are due December 31 to affect the following year’s bill.

Property Taxes at Closing

Ohio property taxes are paid in arrears. The bill you pay in 2026 covers taxes owed for 2025. At every closing in Ohio, the seller credits the buyer for the portion of the current tax year the seller still owned the home.

The math works like this: on a home purchased at $210,000 using Jackson Township’s rate of 46.93 mills, the taxable value is $73,500 and the estimated annual tax is $3,449. The daily rate is roughly $9.45. If closing falls on June 15, the seller has owned the home for 166 days of that calendar year (counting January 1 as day one), and the seller credit to the buyer comes out to approximately $1,569. That shows up as a line item in your favor on the closing disclosure.

Ask your title company to confirm they’re using the current year’s Auditor value for the proration, not the prior year’s tax bill. In a year after a major reappraisal like 2024, those two figures can diverge significantly. As an e-Pro certified REALTOR® with the Stark Trumbull Association of REALTORS®, I make it a point to verify the proration source on every transaction before we get to the table. It’s a detail that’s easy to miss and sometimes worth hundreds of dollars.

For a full breakdown of what closing costs look like in Ohio, see the Ohio home buying guide. To compare neighborhoods by tax rate alongside median home prices and school districts, see the Canton Ohio real estate overview and the Stark County neighborhoods hub.

Frequently Asked Questions