On June 8, 2026, Collierville's Board of Mayor and Aldermen adopted the town's Fiscal Year 2027 budget and left the property tax rate exactly where it sat the year before: $1.62 per $100 of assessed value. Town Hall's own announcement led with the word unchanged. Mayor Maureen Fraser told the Daily Memphian that approving a balanced budget is "a very serious job" the board does not take lightly.
Here is what that headline does not tell you. The same budget introduced a new $5 monthly Street Infrastructure Maintenance Fee, landing on every property owner's bill starting July 1, 2026, earmarked to fund an additional 11 lane miles of paving a year. The rate held. The bill did not.
If you are comparing Collierville against Germantown, Bartlett, or a home inside Memphis city limits, that distinction matters more than it looks. A tax rate is a policy choice a board can freeze for a press release. A tax bill is what actually shows up every December. The gap between those two numbers is the part almost nobody explains to a buyer weighing where to plant a flag in Shelby County.
The mechanism behind "unchanged"
Collierville's rate has not actually been stable for very long. Two budget cycles ago it sat at $1.84. Then Shelby County completed its 2025 countywide reappraisal, and Tennessee's Truth in Taxation law kicked in. That law requires a rate rollback any time reappraisal pushes property values up, so that a town cannot collect a windfall simply because homes got more valuable on paper. The rollback cut Collierville's certified rate from $1.84 down to $1.49.
The board then voted to add 12 cents back on top of that certified floor, landing at the $1.61 to $1.62 range that has held since. Town Administrator Molly Mehner framed the add-back as necessary to cover reappraisal-related appeals and ongoing operating costs, not as a return to the old number.
That sequence is the real story. Last year's board did the heavy lifting, absorbing a reappraisal, a legally mandated rollback, and a partial restoration in a single budget cycle. This year's board inherited a rate that had already been reset and simply chose not to touch it again, while solving its paving budget through a fee instead of a millage increase.
Neighboring towns went through the same mechanism on their own timelines. Germantown's board approved a $1.79 rate, a 29-cent increase layered on top of its own post-reappraisal certified rate, with statements reflecting that rate mailed to property owners in November 2025. The city's own example: a home valued at $450,000 sees roughly $27.31 more per month. Bartlett raised its rate by roughly 26 percent to $1.66 in 2025 to cover rising costs including public safety staffing, then held that rate flat for FY2026-27.
Three boards, three versions of the identical playbook: reappraisal forces a rollback, then each town decides how much of that windfall protection to give back through a rate increase, a new fee, or both.
What the numbers actually do when you stack them
Every property in Shelby County also carries the county's own rate on top of whatever municipal rate applies, currently $2.702382 per $100 of assessed value for 2026, up slightly from $2.69 the year before. Add the county rate to each town's rate and you get the number that actually determines a tax bill.
| Jurisdiction | Town/City Rate | + Shelby County Rate | Combined Rate (per $100 assessed) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Collierville | $1.62 | $2.702382 | $4.32 |
| Bartlett | $1.66 | $2.702382 | $4.36 |
| Germantown | $1.79 | $2.702382 | $4.49 |
| Memphis (city) | $2.58081 | $2.702382 | $5.28 |
Run the same hypothetical $400,000 appraisal through each combined rate (assessed value at Tennessee's standard 25 percent ratio comes to $100,000) and the annual property tax bill on that identical home would be roughly $4,322 in Collierville, $4,362 in Bartlett, $4,492 in Germantown, and $5,283 inside Memphis city limits.
That last figure surprises most people who assume the city carries the lower rate and the suburbs carry the premium. On a pure per-$100 basis, it runs the other way. Memphis's own city rate is higher than any of the three suburban town rates on this list. What actually produces lower average tax bills inside Memphis in practice is not a lower rate. It is that home values, and therefore assessed values, tend to run lower there than in Collierville, Germantown, or comparable pockets of Bartlett. The rate is not doing the work. The appraisal is.
That distinction is the whole point of comparing rates carefully before you compare bills. A buyer who assumes a lower headline rate automatically means a lower total bill is comparing the wrong number.
Where the new fee fits, and who feels it more
Collierville's new $5 monthly fee sits outside all of the rate math above, which is exactly why the town could describe the rate itself as unchanged. It is a flat charge, $60 a year, applied the same way regardless of what a home appraised for.
That flatness cuts differently depending on price point. On a $200,000 appraisal, the combined town-and-county tax bill runs around $2,161 a year, so the new $60 fee adds roughly 2.8 percent on top. On a $700,000 appraisal, the same combined tax bill runs closer to $7,564, and that same $60 fee adds under 0.8 percent. A flat infrastructure fee costs everyone the same dollar amount but a meaningfully different percentage, landing hardest, proportionally, on the town's lower-priced homes.
What this means if you are comparing towns
If you are weighing Collierville against a nearby suburb, or against a Memphis city address, the headline millage rate is a start, not an answer. A few questions get you closer to the real comparison:
- What did this rate look like before the last reappraisal, and did the board add back the full rollback or only part of it?
- Are there new fees, assessments, or special districts layered on top of the base rate that would not show up in a simple rate comparison?
- When is the next countywide reappraisal, since Shelby County is on a four-year cycle with the next one expected in 2029, and how has this town's board historically handled the rollback that follows?
None of that shows up on a listing sheet. It shows up in town budget minutes, county trustee filings, and the kind of multi-year rate history that takes a little digging to assemble.
FAQ
Does the $1.62 rate apply to the tax bill I'll pay this year? The rate a buyer pays is set by the calendar tax year, and Shelby County mails assessment notices each spring with tax bills following later in the year based on the certified rates in effect for that cycle. Confirm the current year's certified rate directly with the Shelby County Trustee before closing, since rates are set annually and can change with each budget cycle.
Will the new $5 street fee show up as part of my property tax bill or somewhere else? Collierville's announcement describes it as a separate municipal fee introduced through the FY2027 budget, distinct from the ad valorem tax rate itself. Buyers should ask directly how the fee will be billed and confirm the mechanism with the town's tax department.
Every neighborhood in Shelby County runs its own version of this math, and the differences rarely show up until you are staring at a closing disclosure or a first tax bill that does not match what you expected. If you are comparing Collierville against Germantown, Bartlett, or a Memphis city address and want the real numbers behind the headline rate, Ware Jones can walk you through what a specific property will actually cost to own, not just what it lists for. Connect with a Memphis neighborhood expert before you make the comparison on your own.
