Property Tax & Income in Franklin County, Massachusetts
Franklin County has an effective property tax rate of 1.44%. On the median home value of $329,000, that's roughly $4,720 per year. Median household income is $74,907.
What you'll pay, at a glance
Property taxes are the largest local tax most homeowners pay. The effective rate measures the real tax bill as a share of home value — a more useful number than the nominal “mill rate,” because assessment practices vary county to county.
| Metric | Franklin County | Massachusetts (state context) |
|---|---|---|
| Effective property tax rate1 | 1.44% | 1.06% |
| Median home value1 | $329,000 | — |
| State income tax3 | top rate 5.00% | top rate 5.00% |
| State sales tax3 | 6.25% combined | 6.25% combined |
How this is calculated
The effective property tax rate is the median real-estate tax bill divided by the median home value — both for owner-occupied homes, from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS 5-year estimates)1. Median income is also from the ACS1. Federal and state income-tax figures use IRS2 and Tax Foundation3 data.
About Franklin County, MA
Franklin County’s effective property tax rate of 1.435% runs well above both benchmarks — the Massachusetts median of 1.063% and the national median of 0.794%. That gap places the county second among the state’s 14 counties for property tax rate, a ranking that signals a comparatively heavy reliance on the property tax locally. A median home value of $329,000 generates a median annual tax bill of $4,720, a figure that lands against a median household income of $74,907 and per-capita income of $42,563. Communities such as Leverett, Shutesbury, and Whately sit within this county, and homeowners there face a rate meaningfully higher than what most Massachusetts residents pay, let alone the national average. The county’s position near the top of the state ranking, combined with a rate roughly double the national figure, points to property taxes that weigh more heavily here than in much of the country.