Maui County's 2026–2027 Property Tax Rates: A Plain-English Breakdown for Residents Who Actually Live Here

Maui County adopted its new real property tax rates effective July 1, 2026, and if you live in your home full-time, most of the news is good. Owner-occupants came out of this cycle better than almost anyone else, but only if you understand how the county's classification system works and you file the one form that unlocks the low rate.

This is the resident's version, written for the people who actually live in the home. If you're weighing the full picture of what a home costs to own here, pair it with the hidden costs of owning on Maui and my overview of how I help buyers.

How Maui property tax actually works

Maui County runs on a fiscal year from July 1 to June 30, and the County Council sets the tax rates each spring, right before that year begins. Those rates aren't one flat number. The county sorts every property into a classification based on its highest and best use with specific exceptions for home exemptions, long-term rentals, and permitted vacation rentals and each classification has its own rate. The classes that matter to most residents are Owner-Occupied (often called Homeowner), Non-Owner-Occupied, Long-Term Rental, and Apartment.

The piece transplants rarely see coming is that Maui uses a tiered structure for the residential classes. Instead of one rate, the county taxes value in brackets, so the rate steps up as assessed value climbs and, importantly, each slice of value is taxed at its own tier's rate, not the whole thing at the top rate. The math is simple once you have the numbers: your bill is your net taxable value (assessed value minus any exemptions), divided by 1,000, multiplied by the rate for each tier your value passes through.

What changed for 2026–27, by classification

Here's the resident-relevant part of the new schedule, with the prior year alongside it so you can see the direction of travel. The county's message this cycle is consistent: reward owner-occupancy and long-term local housing, and lean harder on non-owner-occupied and short-term-rental property at the top end.

The headline for residents: the owner-occupied Tier 1 breakpoint widened from $1.3M to $1.5M, so more primary homes now sit entirely in the lowest $1.65 rate, and the top owner-occupied tier actually dropped from $5.75 to $5.00. Meanwhile non-owner-occupied rates rose across the board and its Tier 3 threshold fell to $2.5M. Living in your home has rarely been more rewarded relative to leaving it empty or to investors.

The Owner-Occupied / Homeowner tier and how to qualify

If the home is your primary residence, this is the classification you want and it pays you twice. First, it moves you to the Homeowner rate, which at $1.65 per $1,000 in Tier 1 is a fraction of the $6.25 a non-owner-occupant pays on the same first million of value. Second, it unlocks a home exemption that subtracts a set amount from your assessed value before the rate is applied, so you're taxed on less. (You can confirm the current exemption amount, and any larger exemption for qualifying seniors, at mauipropertytax.com.)

To claim it, you generally must occupy the property as your principal residence, hold title in your own name, and the step everyone forgets, actually file the exemption claim with the county. It is not automatic. Buying the home and living in it isn't enough; if you never file, you stay classified as non-owner-occupied and pay the far higher rate. This is the single most common and most expensive thing I watch transplants miss in their first year on-island.

Why your tax class, not just your value, drives the bill

Two identical homes on the same street can carry wildly different tax bills purely because one owner lives there full-time and filed for the Homeowner classification and the other didn't. On the first $1,000,000 of value, that's $1.65 versus $6.25 per $1,000 nearly four times the rate. That's the lever, and it's why you should never assume a home's future taxes from the figure on the current listing. A non-owner-occupied seller's tax number can look alarming and have almost nothing to do with what you'll pay once you move in and file.

It also cuts the other way. Classification follows use, so if your situation changes, you move off-island and rent the place out, for instance the county can reclassify it into a higher-taxed category. Your tax status isn't locked at closing; it tracks how you actually use the property. Keep that in mind before you make a home in Central Maui or Kihei anything other than your full-time residence.

A worked example: owner-occupied vs non-owner-occupied

Take a home assessed at $1,200,000 (an illustrative figure - use your own). Because Maui taxes each slice of value at its own tier's rate, the two classifications land in very different places:

As a filed owner-occupant: the whole $1.2M sits inside Tier 1 (which now runs up to $1.5M) at $1.65. That's $1,200,000 ÷ 1,000 × $1.65 = $1,980 a year and your home exemption would trim that further.

As a non-owner-occupant: the first $1,000,000 is taxed at $6.25 ($6,250) and the next $200,000 at the Tier 2 rate of $9.00 ($1,800), for $8,050 a year.

Same house, same value and about a $6,000-a-year difference, every year you own it, purely from classification. That gap is why filing the home exemption is the first thing I make sure new owners handle. Plug your own assessed value into the estimator at the bottom of this post to see your number.

Assessment and appeal dates to circle

A few moments run your tax year, and missing them is expensive. You can appeal your assessed value to the Board of Review, typically within 30 days of receiving your assessment notice, if you believe your property has been overvalued or misclassified. Separately, your home exemption must be filed ahead of the year you want it to apply — don't wait until the bill arrives. And the tax itself is billed in installments across the fiscal year.

Rather than trust any date from memory, look your property up at mauipropertytax.com or call the Real Property Assessment Division at 808-270-7297 to confirm your assessment notice date, exemption deadline, and payment due dates for the current cycle. Put the exemption deadline in your calendar the week you close, filing late means waiting an entire year for the savings to kick in.

The mistakes I see transplants make

Four errors account for most of the money left on the table. The first is simply never filing the home exemption in year one, people assume moving in handles it, and it doesn't, so they sit in the non-owner-occupied rate by default. The second is trusting the listing's tax figure and budgeting off a number that reflects the seller's classification, not yours. The third is forgetting to update classification when use changes, then getting surprised by a reassessment. And the fourth is missing the narrow, roughly 30-day appeal window on a home that's been over-assessed, which locks in a too-high value for the year. None of these are complicated — they're deadlines and paperwork, but on Maui they're worth real money, and I make sure my clients handle every one.

Frequently asked questions

This post is for general information, not tax advice. Rates are sourced from Maui County Resolution No. 26-69 (FY2026–27). For how these apply to your specific property, confirm your classification and figures at mauipropertytax.com or with a tax advisor.