How does a town with three of Bergen County's largest shopping malls, a rate widely described as one of the lowest in the region, and a mayor who talks about it at every opportunity still send some homeowners a five-figure tax bill that rivals what people pay in towns with rates nearly four times as high?
That is not a contradiction. It is the whole story, and most of the coverage of Paramus taxes stops one step before telling it. The rate is real. The commercial subsidy behind it is real. What gets left out is what happens when you multiply that low rate by a home price that has been climbing for a decade, and what happens to the subsidy itself if the retail base propping it up starts to crack.
The Math Nobody Runs at the Open House
Borough officials, including Mayor Christopher DiPiazza, have said the effective rate for the current tax year comes in around 1.415 percent, down from 1.499 percent the year before and the lowest in a decade. Compare that to Teaneck, a few miles away, where the effective rate runs closer to 2.2 percent, and Paramus looks like an obvious win.
Run the actual dollars and the gap narrows fast. One tax comparison of the two towns put the average residential bill in Teaneck at $13,718 against $12,095 in Paramus, a difference of about $1,600 despite a rate gap of nearly a full percentage point. The reason is simple: Teaneck's lower home values eat into most of the rate advantage before it ever reaches your escrow account.
Push the comparison further out, to a town with a genuinely different tax structure, and the pattern gets sharper still. Clifton's general tax rate has run close to 5.9 percent, roughly four times Paramus's rate. Yet a worked comparison of the two towns found Paramus homeowners still paying a median annual bill of $9,889, versus $9,336 in Clifton. A rate four times higher produced a bill that was actually lower, because Clifton's homes cost so much less to begin with.
This is the part that gets buried under headlines about "lowest taxes in Bergen County." The rate tells you what percentage you'll pay. It tells you nothing about the number you'll actually write a check for, because that number depends just as much on what the home costs.
Where the Discount Actually Comes From
The rate is low for a specific, documented reason. Paramus carries more than $13 billion in assessed property value, and according to DiPiazza, 42 percent of that comes from commercial property, not homes. Garden State Plaza, Bergen Town Center, and Paramus Park are doing a lot of the heavy lifting that homeowners in most towns have to shoulder themselves.
"Half of the homes in Paramus are projected to see an estimated tax decrease, even with updated assessments," DiPiazza said, describing the borough's rolling reassessment process. "If your taxes increase, only about 35 percent of that increase goes to the Borough. The rest goes to the Board of Education, County, Open Space, and Library."
That second line matters more than it sounds like it should. Even when the borough's own rate drops, most of what shows up on your bill is set by other bodies that don't answer to the same commercial-subsidy math. The malls can only offset so much.
The Decade Behind the Sticker Price
The rate mechanism is stable. The price it gets applied to is not. Paramus's median sold price rose from roughly $605,000 in 2016 to $1,080,000 in 2025, a gain of about 78 percent over nine years, or roughly 6.6 percent a year compounded. That trend has not slowed. Redfin's rolling three month window through May 2026 showed a median sale price of $1.2 million, up 7.5 percent year over year, and its June 2026 monthly read put the figure at $1,329,277, up 18.7 percent from a year earlier.
Apply even the favorable 1.4 to 1.5 percent effective rate to a home in that range and you land somewhere between $17,000 and $20,000 a year. That is not a small number by any measure, and it is climbing at a pace that will outrun the rate's downward drift within a few reassessment cycles if home values keep compounding the way they have.
The subsidy has not disappeared. It has just been overtaken by what it's being applied to.
A Subsidy Currently Being Tested in Court
There is a second layer to this that most tax explainers skip entirely, and it matters if you plan to own here for more than a few years.
Bergen County is one of the last places in the country with a Sunday retail closing law strict enough to shut down clothing, furniture, and electronics sales, and Paramus enforces an even tighter version of it than the county as a whole. That law is not incidental to the tax story. It's part of what has kept Garden State Plaza, Bergen Town Center, and Paramus Park operating as the retail engine that funds nearly half the borough's assessed value.
American Dream, the mega mall in East Rutherford, has been operating retail on Sundays on the theory that it sits on state land and the county law doesn't reach it. Paramus sued over it. Bergen County Executive Jim Tedesco backed the borough's position directly.
"Why should they be able to open, and nobody else can open? That's not fair," Tedesco said. "It's not legally right, it's not morally right, and it's certainly against the law."
As of this spring, the case was still working its way through Bergen County court, with no ruling on record yet. Whatever the outcome, the fact that it's being litigated at all says something a rate table never will: the retail base that keeps Paramus homeowners' bills lower than a straight rate comparison would suggest is not a fixed feature of the town. It's a competitive position the borough is actively fighting to defend.
What This Means If You're Comparing Towns
None of this means Paramus is a bad tax town. The commercial subsidy is real, documented, and currently working in homeowners' favor. What it means is that the number worth comparing across Bergen County isn't the advertised rate. It's rate times price, tracked over the years you actually plan to own the home, with an eye on whether the thing subsidizing that rate is stable or being contested in a courtroom.
A few things worth checking before you weigh Paramus against another town on taxes alone:
- Ask for the last 12 months of actual tax bills on the specific address, not the borough average, since ZIP-level and street-level assessments can vary
- Look at the home's price trajectory over the last three to five years, not just the current list price, since the rate is fixed relative to assessed value but assessed value is not fixed
- Factor in that roughly two thirds of any increase flows to the school district, county, and other bodies outside the borough's rate-setting control
FAQ
Is Paramus's low tax rate guaranteed to stay where it is? No. The rate is recalculated each year based on the ratio of assessed value to municipal budget needs, and the borough's own reassessment process has shifted it in recent years. It has trended down, but it is not fixed.
Could my taxes jump if the commercial base shrinks? That's the mechanism worth watching. The rate stays low in large part because commercial property carries a large share of the assessed base. Any meaningful erosion of that base, whether from vacancy, reassessment shifts, or competitive pressure from places like American Dream, would put more weight back on residential rates over time.
How do I find out what a specific Paramus address actually pays? The Paramus Tax Assessor's office maintains individual assessment records, and the Bergen County Board of Taxation handles appeals if you believe an assessment is off. Those two offices, not a borough-wide average, are the source for what a specific property actually owes.
If you're weighing Paramus against another Bergen County town and want the real math run on a specific address, not just the headline rate, Daniel Chamoun can walk you through what the numbers actually mean for your budget. Schedule a free consultation and get a straight answer before you make an offer.
