Pull up an online property tax calculator for Wasilla and you might see something that looks like a typo: an effective rate near zero, tucked next to a note that Wasilla sits in Matanuska-Susitna Borough. It is not a typo. For fiscal year 2026, the twelve months that ran from July 2025 through this past June, the City of Wasilla set its own municipal mill rate at 0.0, meaning the city government levied no property tax of its own. Sales tax carried the load instead, supplying more than two-thirds of the city's general fund revenue for the year.
That single fact rearranges how a buyer should compare Wasilla to Anchorage, and it is about to be tested at a much bigger scale. On November 3, Mat-Su Borough voters will decide whether to do at the borough level what Wasilla has already done at the city level: erase the property tax line and replace it with a sales tax.
The Zero Isn't an Accident
Most people assume a city inside a borough stacks two tax bills: a city rate on top of a county or borough rate. That is how it works in Palmer, where the city still levies its own property tax alongside the borough's. It is not how it works in Wasilla. According to the Frontiersman's coverage of the city council's FY26 budget session, council members set Wasilla's municipal mill rate at 0.0, with sales tax generating $27,384,000, over two-thirds of the city's total operating revenue for the year.
That means a Wasilla homeowner's property tax bill was, in practice, just the Mat-Su Borough's areawide mill rate. For FY26, the borough assembly set that rate at 8.485 mills, about $849 per $100,000 of assessed value, down from 8.748 mills the year before. There was no additional city layer sitting on top of it. Compare that to someone living just outside Wasilla's city limits, in unincorporated borough land, who paid the areawide rate plus a separate non-areawide rate of 0.371 mills, an amount that funds services in areas without their own city government. Heading into FY27, the borough manager's April budget proposal called for a further cut, to 7.966 areawide mills, with a final assembly vote expected that spring, a sign the downward trend on the rate itself was continuing even as the underlying values it gets applied to kept moving.
Anchorage works on a fundamentally different model. The Municipality of Anchorage is a unified home rule city-borough, so there is no separate "city" layer to eliminate. Every property owner pays into one combined municipal rate that funds everything from schools to road service areas, and Anchorage's assessor sent out notices this year showing increases in the 20 to 40 percent range for some properties, according to Alaska's News Source. Municipal Chief Administrative Officer Bill Falsey pushed back on the idea that this was a deliberate revenue grab, arguing that if assessed values rise across the board, the mill rate gets depressed to compensate and taxpayers land in roughly the same place.
That is the theory. Whether it holds in practice is where the Mat-Su story gets more interesting.
Why the Mill Rate Fell but Bills Kept Climbing
Here is the part that surprises people who assume a lower mill rate automatically means a lower bill. Mat-Su's areawide rate has been falling for two straight budget cycles, yet many property owners are still seeing higher tax bills. The reason is not the rate. It is the base the rate gets multiplied against.
Borough Assessor Oliver Querin told the assembly in January that a review of land east of the Matanuska River, including the Butte area, found parcels valued at about 64 percent below their actual market value. A broader borough snapshot found property values across the region were roughly half of what they should be. That is not a one-year fluke. It is the result of a mismatch between assessed and market values that Borough Manager Mike Brown described as a decades-old issue that has grown into something politically difficult to unwind. Rather than correct it all at once, the borough is phasing the fix in over roughly six years, moving region by region. Finance Director Cheyenne Heindel told KTNA in January that assessors had already completed the area from the Matanuska River to Palmer and expected to move into the core area, Sutton, and Chickaloon by the following summer.
So a falling mill rate and a rising tax bill can both be true at the same time in Mat-Su, and they are, for the same reason a shrinking tax rate on a growing paycheck can still mean a bigger withholding. Average single-family home values across the borough rose 7.41 percent in the most recent assessment cycle, with land values up 15 percent as part of that same six-year correction. Borough officials have been candid that the math will not fully offset itself. As Brown put it to the assembly in January, the frustration over rising bills isn't really an assessment problem. It's a different problem entirely, one that a lower rate alone can't fix.
The Ballot Measure That Could Erase the Whole Line
If Wasilla's zero-mill approach sounds like a preview, that is because it is being formally proposed for the entire borough. Assembly member Michael Bowles introduced an ordinance in March, when the areawide rate stood at 8.485 mills, that would repeal the borough's property tax outright and replace it with a 6.5 percent areawide sales tax, capped at the first $1,000 of any single transaction. Bowles has argued that assessed values are rising so fast that the current system amounts to an overwhelming burden, and that a sales tax spreads the cost to visitors, tourists, and out-of-borough recreational users rather than concentrating it on homeowners.
The measure is headed to Mat-Su voters on November 3, 2026. If it passes, it would take effect April 1, 2027, and the borough estimates it would generate about $125 million a year, replacing not just the property tax but also existing marijuana and hotel and vacation rental taxes. Seniors and disabled veterans, who currently receive property tax exemptions, would be carved out under a planned amendment.
Wasilla's own city council is not on board. In early June, the council took up a resolution opposing the borough's ordinance, asking that any new sales tax apply only in areas without an existing city sales tax and that cities retain explicit authority to set and administer their own levies. That opposition makes sense given what Wasilla already has: a sales-tax-funded city government that would suddenly be sharing that tax base with a borough-wide levy layered on top of it. The city that pioneered this model within its own limits is wary of the borough copying it at scale.
What This Actually Means If You're Comparing Wasilla to Anchorage Right Now
For a relocating buyer weighing Anchorage against Wasilla this fall, the honest comparison is not mill rate versus mill rate. It is two different systems for funding local government, one built almost entirely on property assessments and one that has already shifted a meaningful share of its revenue onto consumption. That difference shows up at the closing table in your escrow estimate, and it shows up every time you make a purchase inside Wasilla city limits, where sales tax funds the services a property tax bill would fund elsewhere.
It also means the ground could shift again soon. If the November ballot measure passes, buyers comparing Anchorage to anywhere in Mat-Su after April 2027 will be comparing Anchorage's traditional mill-rate system to a borough that taxes purchases rather than home values. If it fails, the borough's six-year assessment correction continues on its current path, and buyers should expect land and home values in previously undervalued areas to keep climbing toward market rate over the next several assessment cycles, regardless of what the headline mill rate does.
Does buying in Wasilla mean I pay no property tax at all? No. You still pay the Mat-Su Borough's areawide mill rate, which was 8.485 mills for FY26 and proposed to fall further to 7.966 mills for FY27. What you avoid is a separate city-level property tax, because Wasilla's city government funds itself through sales tax instead.
If the November measure passes, does that affect people who already own homes in Wasilla? The ballot measure targets the borough's areawide property tax, not Wasilla's city mill rate, which is already zero. The bigger effect would land on unincorporated areas and cities like Palmer that still rely on their own property tax alongside the borough's.
Should I wait until after the election to make a decision? That is a personal call, but the practical effect for most single-family buyers would not begin until April 2027 even if the measure passes, since it would not take effect until then. Timing your purchase around a ballot measure that has not yet been decided carries its own risk.
If you are weighing Wasilla against Anchorage, or trying to figure out what a specific property's tax history actually looks like before you write an offer, Calling Alaska Home can walk you through the numbers on a specific address, not just the borough average. Reach out for a free home valuation and a straight answer about what you'd actually owe.
