TRENTON – Property taxes in New Jersey climbed by nearly 2% again last year, restrained by the cap but still amounting to a $583 million tax hike. The statewide tab now exceeds $31 billion.

The tax bill on the average home rose to $9,284, according to official data from the Department of Community Affairs. That's a $172 or 1.9% increase.

An earlier unofficial calculation showed the average bill at $9,266, but that relied on average assessment data from the Department of Treasury that was inaccurate for some towns, mostly rural ones, because farm homesteads were excluded.

Town-by-town details within each county, as well as an interactive map, are available at the bottom of this story.

“We’re making more progress against property taxes than any administration before us,” Murphy said.

Gov. Phil Murphy, who was inaugurated for a second term on Jan. 18, talked up his property tax record last week in his fourth State of the State address.

“We’re making more progress against property taxes than any administration before us,” Murphy said. “Through the policies we’ve put in place, and the community investments we’ve made, our administration has slowed the rate of property tax growth more than any of the previous four administrations – a record that includes four of the lowest year-over-year increases in property taxes on record.”

Sen. Declan O’Scanlon, R-Monmouth, said property tax increases have slowed mainly because of the 2% cap installed a decade ago. He said they’re still under pressure due to the lapsing of an arbitration cap on police salaries and would benefit from pension reforms that aren’t on the agenda.

“This administration has benefited from the reforms that have been in place since before they got into office,” O’Scanlon said.

“This year didn’t happen to be a particularly bad year, and that’s good,” he said. “But no one should fool themselves into believing that we’ve solved their property tax problem. There’s still a lot of work to do.”

School taxes rose 2.3%, compared with 1.6% for county taxes and 1.3% for municipal taxes.

The total tax levy statewide for county, municipal and school budgets was up 1.9% to $31.4 billion. Add in the $324 million for 267 special taxing districts not included in the standard analysis, including 175 fire districts, and the bill is around $31.75 billion.

For the average home in the state, which is now assessed at $335,623, the bill jumped 1.9% last year. The tax bill increased an average of $155 a year over the past 11 years, about half the $315 yearly increase recorded in the decade before that.

Over the last 10 years, property tax bills have risen by an average of 1.87% a year. That compares with 5.5% in the decade before that. But that amounted to a $1,525 increase over the last decade, up from $7,759 in 2011.

Schools, which account for about 53% of the statewide property tax bill, accounted for 64.5% of the increase in 2021. School taxes rose 2.3%, compared with 1.6% for county taxes and 1.3% for municipal taxes.

Murphy said his administration spent $3 billion more on public schools in his first term than the state had in the prior four years, including $1.5 billion this school year alone.

“We are doing this not just because our kids deserve it but because our property taxpayers do, too,” Murphy said. “School funding is property tax relief. Every single one of these dollars we as a state have invested is a dollar kept in the pockets of property taxpayers.”

Assembly Minority Leader John DiMaio, R-Warren, said state revenue growth should be redirected to schools and municipal aid and tied to cutting property taxes.

“We must lower the cost people pay in every facet of life, beginning with their taxes,” DiMaio said. “This is what people want.”

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Two hundred one of the state’s 565 municipalities had average residential tax bills of $10,000 or more in 2021, up by 12 from one year earlier.

2021 NJ property taxes: See how your town compares

Find your municipality in this alphabetical list to see how its average property tax bill for 2021 compares to others. You can also see how much the average bill changed from 2020. For an interactive map version, click here. And for the full analysis by New Jersey 101.5, read this story.

Find your municipality in the map below and click to see more information.

To see this map on a wider screen, follow this link.

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