Written by Jesse Brewer, Boone County Commissioner
Sometime this October, Boone County property owners will receive their annual property tax bills.
Most of us will probably do what we do every year: look at the total, wonder why it is what it is, and eventually write the check.
But how many of us actually know where that money goes?
It is a fair question, and the answer is probably more complicated than most people realize.
When we talk about a “Boone County property tax bill,” it is easy to assume that most of that money goes to Boone County government. After all, the taxes arrive together on one bill.
But that is not how the system works.
Your property tax bill is actually a collection of taxes from several different taxing authorities. Each has its own tax rate, its own governing structure and, in most cases, its own budget.
With tax bills coming again this fall, I thought it would be useful to take the 2025 tax rates and answer a simpler question:
For every $1 you paid in property taxes, where did the money actually go?
Illustration based on 2025 Boone County tax rates. The percentages shown are each taxing authority’s share of the property-tax dollar – not the tax rates themselves.
One important point before getting into the numbers: the percentages in this graphic are not the tax rates.
They represent the percentage of each property tax dollar that went to each taxing authority.
For example, the 59.3% shown for Boone County Schools does not mean the school district had a 59.3% property tax rate. It means that, using the 2025 rates in our example, approximately 59.3 cents of every $1 collected went to Boone County Schools.
I think looking at the taxes this way makes a complicated system much easier to understand.
For every $1.00 in property taxes paid in this example, approximately 59.3 cents went to Boone County Schools.
Another 16.5 cents went to the fire district.
Approximately 9.6 cents went to the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
And the amount that went to Boone County Fiscal Court was approximately 7.7 cents.
The remainder went to other taxing authorities: approximately 3.7 cents to the Boone County Public Library, 1.8 cents to the Northern Kentucky Health Department and 1.4 cents to the Cooperative Extension Service.
Put all of that together, and approximately 92.3 cents of every property tax dollar in this example went to taxing authorities other than Boone County Fiscal Court.
A few important details about the example
These numbers are intended to help explain the property tax system, not calculate anyone’s individual tax bill.
The graphic uses 2025 tax rates, the most recent completed property tax year. The rates for the bills arriving this October may be different.
We also based the example on a Boone County property outside city limits and within the Boone County School District. We excluded the Walton-Verona Independent School District because it has a different school tax rate.
Fire districts presented another challenge because their tax rates are not all the same.
Rather than choose one fire district and make it appear representative of the entire county, we blended the rates of Boone County’s taxing fire districts and used the average fire district tax rate for the illustration.
That means the exact percentages on your individual bill will vary depending on where you live.
The purpose isn’t to tell you exactly what your upcoming bill will be. It is to give you a better idea of who receives the money after you pay it.
Why does that distinction matter?
From a taxpayer’s perspective, a dollar is a dollar.
Whether your money goes to Fiscal Court, the school district, a fire district, the library or the state, it still came out of your pocket. Every government entity that collects taxpayer money has a responsibility to use it wisely and explain what taxpayers are receiving in return.
But understanding who receives the money matters because accountability is difficult if we don’t know who is responsible for what.
Boone County Fiscal Court does not set the school district’s property tax rate. We do not set the fire districts’ rates. We do not set the library’s rate.
Likewise, those entities do not determine the Fiscal Court’s property tax rate.
They are separate taxing authorities even though their taxes ultimately appear together on the same bill.
Consider what that means using a hypothetical $3,000 property tax bill and the percentages from our 2025 example.
Approximately $1,779 would have gone to Boone County Schools. About $495 would have gone to the fire district. Approximately $288 would have gone to the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
The Boone County Fiscal Court portion would have been approximately $231.
The remainder would have been divided among the library, health district and extension service.
Again, those are illustrative numbers, not an estimate of anyone’s actual bill. But putting the percentages into dollars helps show how the system works.
Take another look when your bill arrives
This October, when your property tax bill arrives, I would encourage you to do something many of us probably don’t normally do.
Don’t just look at the number at the bottom.
Take a few minutes and look at the different taxing authorities listed on the bill. Look at who is collecting what. If something changed, ask why. And if you have a question about a particular tax, make sure you are asking the governmental entity that actually sets it.
That is not about pointing fingers between different levels of government. It is about understanding how local government works.
Property taxes help fund schools, fire protection, libraries, county services and other public services our community uses every day. Reasonable people can disagree about how much government should collect, how that money should be spent and whether taxpayers are receiving good value in return.
Those are worthwhile discussions.
But those discussions are much more productive when we begin with good information.
When your property tax bill arrives this October, remember that it isn’t really one property tax paid to one government. It is several taxes from several different taxing authorities collected together on the same bill.
Based on our 2025 example, approximately 7.7 cents of every property tax dollar went to Boone County Fiscal Court. The other 92.3 cents went to other taxing authorities.
Knowing where the money goes doesn’t tell us whether every dollar is being spent wisely.
But it gives taxpayers a much better place to start asking questions.
Jesse Brewer
Boone County Commissioner
