Marshfield, MA Property Tax Rate: FY2026 Drops to $9.61
Marshfield's property tax rate just moved in a direction many homeowners don't expect: down. The town's own Assessors' Office confirms a FY2026 rate of $9.61 per $1,000 of assessed value, a real decrease from FY2025's $9.90. That's not an accident or a one-time discount — it's Massachusetts' Proposition 2½ levy-cap system working the way it's designed to work. This page explains that mechanism in plain terms, lays out exactly which of Marshfield's rate figures are confirmed and which aren't, and puts Marshfield's rate in context against its South Shore neighbors and the statewide average.
Proposition 2½: A Cap on Revenue Growth, Not a Fixed Statewide Rate
Every Massachusetts town's property tax rate is governed by Proposition 2½, a 1980 ballot law. The single most important thing to understand about it: it does not set a statewide tax rate, and towns don't simply pick a number and adjust it at will. Instead, it caps the total dollar amount of property-tax revenue — the "levy" — that a town is allowed to raise each year. A town's levy can never exceed 2.5% of its total assessed value, and the levy itself can only grow by at most 2.5% plus whatever new revenue comes from "new growth" (newly built homes, additions, subdivisions, and other newly taxable construction), unless voters approve an override.
That flips the usual assumption about how a tax rate works. In a flat-rate system, the rate is fixed and the bill is the output. Under Prop 2½, the allowed total levy is the fixed input, and the per-$1,000 rate is actually backed into afterward — a town's assessors divide that year's allowed levy by the town's total assessed value to arrive at the rate. When assessed values rise faster than the levy is permitted to grow, the rate has to come down to keep total revenue within the cap. That is exactly what happened in Marshfield between FY2025 and FY2026.
Marshfield's Confirmed Rates: FY2025 and FY2026
Marshfield's FY2025 rate was $9.90 per $1,000 of assessed value — cross-confirmed by two independent sources: a Marshfield-specific property-tax guide (steve-novak.com) and massachusettsalmanac.com's own Massachusetts Communities Tax Rate table for Fiscal Year 2025. This appears to be a single (not split) rate, applied the same way to residential and commercial property.
For FY2026, the rate dropped to $9.61 per $1,000 — confirmed directly from the Town of Marshfield's own Assessors' Office page, which states plainly: "FISCAL YEAR 2026 - TAX RATE $9.61," and separately confirms the same figure in its own FAQ. A drop of nearly 30 cents per $1,000 in a single year is a genuine, notable decrease, not a rounding artifact, and it's consistent with what Prop 2½ predicts when a town's total assessed value climbs: the same capped levy gets divided across a larger base, and the rate eases downward.
What FY2023 and FY2024 Looked Like: Honestly, Not Confirmed
This page will not guess at Marshfield's FY2023 or FY2024 rates. Multiple searches — including the Massachusetts Department of Revenue's own Tax Levies, Assessed Values and Tax Rates pages, a multi-year tax-rate lookup tool, and a national property-tax-trends site — did not surface confirmed, individual-year figures for Marshfield in those two fiscal years. Interpolating between FY2025's $9.90 and FY2026's $9.61 might feel tempting, but Prop 2½ rates don't move in a straight line — Duxbury's own rate history (FY2023 $10.69, FY2024 $10.06, FY2025 $10.14) shows a rate can drop sharply and then tick back up the very next year, so any assumed FY2023/FY2024 Marshfield number would be a guess dressed up as a fact.
Anyone who needs Marshfield's FY2023 or FY2024 rate should go to a primary source directly: the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, Division of Local Services "Tax Rates by Class" database (dls-gw.dor.state.ma.us), or Marshfield's own Assessors' Office at 870 Moraine Street, phone 781-834-5585. Those are the two sources this page recommends, and neither one is this page pretending to have an answer it doesn't have.
How Marshfield Compares: The South Shore Cluster and the State
Massachusettsalmanac.com's FY2025 Massachusetts Communities Tax Rate table lines up four South Shore neighbors side by side: Marshfield at $9.90, Duxbury at $10.14, Scituate at $9.99, and Cohasset at $11.58, all per $1,000 of assessed value. Of that cluster, Marshfield was the lowest — meaningfully below Cohasset, and a bit below both Duxbury and Scituate as well. With Marshfield's FY2026 rate now down to $9.61, that gap has only grown, assuming its neighbors' rates haven't fallen by a similar margin.
Zoomed out further, steve-novak.com puts the Massachusetts statewide average property tax rate at approximately $12.40 per $1,000. Marshfield's FY2025 rate of $9.90 sat roughly 20% below that average — and its even lower FY2026 rate of $9.61 pushes that gap wider still. For a buyer comparing Marshfield against other Massachusetts coastal towns, or against the state as a whole, the honest takeaway is that Marshfield's rate runs meaningfully below both its immediate South Shore neighbors and the state average.
What an Actual Tax Bill Looks Like: Two Different Estimates
Two sources give genuinely different average-bill estimates, and this page presents both rather than blending them into one invented number. Steve-novak.com's guide (FY2025 vintage) estimated a median home value of roughly $980,000 and an average annual tax bill of about $9,700 (roughly $808 a month) — a figure built around that specific, higher home-value assumption.
Ownwell's Marshfield trends page (last updated April 2026) tells a different, lower-value story: a median home value of $674,200, a median annual tax bill of $6,676, and a median effective property-tax rate of 0.99% — compared to a Massachusetts state median effective rate of 1.15% and a U.S. median of 1.02%. Marshfield's effective rate running below both the state and national median lines up with the nominal $9.61-$9.90 rate being on the low side for the area. These two estimates disagree meaningfully on home value, likely reflecting different vintages or methodologies (assessed value versus market value, or a different geographic cut) rather than a real contradiction — but a reader estimating their own future bill should treat these as two separate reference points, not average them together, and should run their own numbers against Marshfield's actual FY2026 rate and their specific property's assessed value.
Before You Rely on These Numbers, Verify Them Directly
This page's confirmed figures are Marshfield's FY2025 rate ($9.90, cross-confirmed by steve-novak.com and massachusettsalmanac.com) and its FY2026 rate ($9.61, confirmed directly from the Town of Marshfield's own Assessors' Office page and FAQ). The FY2023 and FY2024 rates are explicitly not confirmed here, and this page has deliberately avoided guessing at them. The two average-bill estimates ($9,700/year on a ~$980,000 home per steve-novak.com, and $6,676/year on a $674,200 home at a 0.99% effective rate per Ownwell) are presented as separately sourced figures, not merged into a single number.
Tax rates and assessed values change on an annual cycle, and Marshfield's own classification-hearing process each fall can shift the following fiscal year's rate in either direction. Anyone budgeting for a Marshfield purchase should confirm the current rate directly with the Town of Marshfield's Assessors' Office (870 Moraine Street, 781-834-5585) or the Massachusetts DLS Tax Rates by Class database, and should consult a Massachusetts-licensed tax professional or real estate attorney before making a purchase decision based on property tax exposure.
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Get a Free Agent Referral →Independent research. No ads. No sponsored listings. The Proposition 2½ levy-cap mechanism described here — a 1980 Massachusetts ballot law capping total levy growth at 2.5% per year plus new-growth revenue, absent a voter-approved override, rather than a directly set statewide or flat rate — reflects the same mechanism documented in this site's Duxbury, MA property tax page. Marshfield's FY2025 rate ($9.90 per $1,000) is cross-confirmed by steve-novak.com and massachusettsalmanac.com's Massachusetts Communities Tax Rate Fiscal Year 2025 table, which also supplies the Duxbury ($10.14), Scituate ($9.99), and Cohasset ($11.58) comparison figures. Marshfield's FY2026 rate ($9.61 per $1,000) is confirmed directly from the Town of Marshfield's own Assessors' Office page and FAQ. FY2023 and FY2024 rates could not be confirmed in the research behind this page; readers needing those figures should consult the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, Division of Local Services "Tax Rates by Class" database (dls-gw.dor.state.ma.us) or Marshfield's Assessors' Office (870 Moraine Street, 781-834-5585) directly. The Massachusetts statewide average rate of approximately $12.40 per $1,000 is per steve-novak.com. Average tax bill figures are presented from two separate sources without being merged: steve-novak.com's estimate (~$9,700/year on a ~$980,000 home) and Ownwell's Marshfield trends page (median $6,676/year on a $674,200 home at a 0.99% effective rate, versus a 1.15% Massachusetts median and 1.02% U.S. median). Nothing here is tax or legal advice; consult a Massachusetts-licensed tax professional or real estate attorney, and Marshfield's own Assessors' Office, before making a purchase decision based on property tax exposure.