'I've just ruined their lives': Nashville bar owner's property tax bill soars from $129K to $589K

With no income tax, Tennessee can seem like an attractive option for American families — and businesses — looking to lower costs. However, as the Financial Times reports, a resulting boom in the state's capital, has driven up sales and property tax. (1)

Tom Morales, owner of Nashville's Acme Feed & Seed, told the news outlet that when he opened the property tax bill for the four-floor music venue this past October, he was shocked to see it had gone from $129,000 a year to $589,000. (2)

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"You just open up the envelope and say, 'What? This can't be right,'" said Morales, who had wanted to leave the business to his children. "Having a business you can give to your kids is something you dream about. I was like, 'Oh my God, I've just ruined their lives.'" (3)

"We were thinking it would go up 30, 40 percent; I could never have imagined it was going to go up 380 or 400 percent," added his daughter, Lauren.

As the Tax Foundation notes, states with high property taxes can rely heavily on them to make up for low — or no — tax in other categories, like zero income tax in the case of Tennessee (although it does have the second-highest combined state and local tax rate, at 9.61%, behind Louisiana, 10.11%, but ahead of Washington, 9.51%). (4)

Overall, Tennessee actually ranks among the lowest, at 41, for property tax rates by state, according to 2024 figures, the latest data available from the Tax Foundation. (4) As a percentage of owner-occupied housing value, the state had a 0.56% property tax rate, less than half that of New Jersey, with the highest, at 1.88%.

Property taxes are a local government's biggest source of funding, accounting for 70% of tax collected locally in the U.S. in 2023, according to the Tax Foundation. (4) They go to running schools, hospitals, police and fire departments, roads, water, sewer and other essential services — and when more people are using those services, cities and counties need more funding to operate them.

Nashville was among the 10 fastest-growing cities in the U.S. in 2025, and has increased in size by an average of 1.37% each year between 2022 and 2025, now with a population of more than 1.36 million. (5)

In 2025, tax rates were increased by 26% ($2.814 per $100 of assessed property value) for the so-called urban services district, and by 39% ($2,782 per $100 of assessed property value) for the general services district, with the city confirming that "tax bills increased due to tax rate increases, not just property value increases." (6)

That meant a painful double-whammy for Morales. According to documents he shared with the Financial Times, the assessed value of Acme Feed & Seed went from $9.6 million in 2021, the last year the city valued it, to a staggering $50 million in 2025. (1) Meaning he is now paying more than a quarter more in property tax, starting at 2.814%, depending on where in the urban services district a business is located, on a property suddenly assessed for $40.4 million more. (7)

Nashville business owners, including Morales, are asking the city for relief from the recent reassessments. A 287-member group called Business Coalition sent a letter to Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell and Davidson County Assessor Vivian Wilhoite requesting that, for starters, businesses appealing reassessment be allowed to pay the previous year's tax rate until their case is heard. (8)

News Channel 5 Nashville reports that the group also asked for the Board of Equalization, the department that oversees appeals, to be expanded to speed up those appeals, and that property valuations be based on income rather than speculation during appeal hearings. (8)

Christian Paro, owner of Center 615, a shared workspace campus with nearly 100 suites in East Nashville, and one of the coalition leaders, says the property tax reassessment has caused him serious financial strain.

"I am late on, I think, about half of my bills now; I've only paid half of them," he said.

He told Channel 5 Nashville that although he could sell the property, which was reassessed for $13 million, it wouldn't make the problem of his tax bill, "around $145,000 per year," disappear.

"The question I've posed to the mayor's office and the assessor's office is, what about the people who want to continue doing business in their neighborhoods?" Paro said. (8)

Mayor O'Connell has said he is sympathetic to the issue of affordability for business owners, but that his hands are tied where it concerns the reassessment appeals.

"Unlike a lot of our peer cities, we simply, as a result of state policy, don't have much flexibility in the way we apply our very limited tools," he told the Financial Times. (1) "In terms of selectively looking at our legacy local businesses, we just don't have a lot of capacity to help them in that property tax scenario."

The Financial Times also reports that state lawmakers have proposed a $300 million tourism sales tax surplus that could be used as relief for businesses in "visitor hot spots." For everyone else, appeals remain the only recourse as they face higher taxes in a state once considered a tax haven.

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Financial Times (1); Acme Feed & Seed (2); Archive.ph (3); Tax Foundation (4); Exploding Topics (5); Nashville.gov (6),(7); News Channel 5 (8),

This article originally appeared on Moneywise.com under the title: 'I've just ruined their lives': Nashville bar owner's property tax bill soars from $129K to $589K

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