Want to know how much you paid for LA city services this year? Try our calculator

Our tax money makes our cities function. It funds everything from pothole repair to garbage pickup to firefighting.

So how much money are you personally putting into all these services?

If you’re a resident of Los Angeles, we made a calculator to show you how your property tax dollars were spent on city services this year, based on the city’s spending estimates. And, yes, this matters for renters, too.

Understanding how cities handle their funds — and where your money fits into it — is one of the best ways residents can hold their leaders accountable. That’s especially relevant now as the L.A. city government faces a financial crisis fueled in part by overspending.

How it works

Roughly a third of the city’s general fund (think of it as L.A.’s main checking account used to pay for services, including police, parks and libraries) comes from property taxes. This is the money we’re following with this calculator.

If you’re a homeowner in the city of L.A., you’re paying that tax directly. If you’re a renter, you’re likely helping your landlord pay that tax through your rent. When your landlord’s property taxes go up (or any other costs — maintenance, repairs or insurance), rent prices often follow.

The rest of the city’s revenues come from sales taxes, business taxes, parking tickets and other fees. You’re likely paying some of those, too, but it's harder to pin down how much you’re contributing in a given year.

To keep things simple, we’ll only be tracking property taxes with this tool — but know that your actual total contribution is likely higher.

If you live outside the city of L.A., your breakdown will look different. We don’t yet have detailed calculations for other cities within the county or some of the other government services your money goes to, like school districts or county departments.

If you’d like us to take a closer look at anything, send us a note via the form at the bottom of this story.

How to find out how much property tax you paid this year

The median property tax bill in L.A. is $5,438 per year, according to the Tax Foundation. When in doubt, use this number in the calculator.

To get a more precise figure, you can look up a property tax bill by address with the following steps:

1. Type in your address on the L.A. County Assessor’s website and find the 10-digit Assessor’s Identification Number, or AIN.
2. Enter the AIN here (no dashes) to pull up the most recent property tax bill.
3. Find the number on the top right that corresponds with General Tax Levy. This is the portion that goes to city and county general funds. Use this number in our calculator below. (If you’re in a large apartment building, this number is going to be pretty big. You can divide it by the number of units in your building to estimate your contribution.)

Try the calculator

Input your property tax amount below and see what the breakdown looks like. Read below to get additional background on some of this spending.

More on how the city spends its money

Wondering what kind of discussions city leaders are having over spending?

Much of their attention has been on the budgets for the police and fire departments, which receive the largest share of city funds but have grappled with staffing shortages. Payouts for liability claims have also pushed the city further into its current budget crisis. Meanwhile, departments like the Bureau of Sanitation and Bureau of Street Lighting are proposing raising other fees to fund their services as city finances get tighter.

Here’s more context behind some of these figures along with LAist’s recent reporting on city department budgets.

Police

The Police Department receives more city funding than any other department. More than 95% of its budget comes from the general fund.

The number of sworn police officers has been falling in recent years. Today there are about 8,700 sworn officers, down from roughly 10,000 before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Encouraging recruitment is one reason L.A. Mayor Karen Bass in 2023 said she supported salary hikes for officers worth $1 billion over four years, a deal the L.A. City Council approved. The raises are guaranteed under a contract with the police officers’ union, which means the salary portion of the LAPD budget — and your contribution to it — will continue to rise until the contract is up in 2027.

More reporting:

• McDonnell confirmed as new LAPD chief, says he won't cooperate with ICE
• LA City Council approves major police salary hike

Fire

The Fire Department’s budget has been a hot topic of conversation since the Palisades Fire erupted in January. (The LAFD was not in charge of fighting the Eaton Fire, which burned the unincorporated area of Altadena. That was managed by the L.A. County Fire Department.) This department’s budget comes almost entirely from the general fund, with less than 1% coming from a half-cent sales tax all Californians pay for local public safety agencies.

Before the fires broke out, then-L.A. Fire Chief Kristin Crowley had warned that the department was understaffed and that emergency services were suffering. With just under one firefighter per 1,000 residents, the LAFD is among the smallest fire departments per capita of any major city. Response times have also increased in recent years as the city’s population has grown.

The L.A. City Council approved a labor contract in 2024 that boosted firefighter pay and funded new equipment, but Crowley said that wasn’t enough to address understaffing. The mayor’s budget proposal for 2025-26 increases the department’s budget to add 227 new positions, an increase of about 6%.

More reporting:

• Before the latest firestorm, LA had been warned that its Fire Department is too small
• LA faces $9.5M payout for unpaid firefighter OT — on top of $1.2 billion already spent
• LA mayor and fire chief's public feud: Inside the fallout over January's wildfire

City employee benefits

One of L.A.'s biggest costs is its annual contributions to retirement and pension funds for city employees, which come from the general fund. This year the city paid $1.4 billion — about 17.9% of the general fund — to cover those payments plus some short-term borrowing costs to cover cash flow gaps. Sworn police and fire employees receive the biggest portion of these pension funds.

In 2024, L.A. city voters passed Measure FF, which raised the overall cost of pensions. It allowed about 460 park rangers, port police and other peace officers the option to move from the civilian pension system to the more generous plan reserved for fire and police officers. An analysis from the city administrative officer said the measure would cost the general fund a $23 million one-time payment and about $1 million annually.

When the stock market performs poorly, the city has to contribute more of your tax money to pension funds to make sure pension recipients get what they’re owed. That’s one of many ways the national economic outlook will have a big impact on L.A.’s finances in the years to come.

More reporting:

• What happens to LA council members’ pay and benefits when they leave office? 

Homelessness programs

The dollar amount shown in this tool only represents a few of the city’s services for unhoused people that aren’t part of other departments’ costs, including Inside Safe, Bass’ initiative to move thousands of unhoused Angelenos to temporary hotels and motels while they await permanent housing, and CIRCLE, a crisis response program that sends mental health workers to respond to non-violent calls involving unhoused people.

This figure reflects about $70 million of spending on homelessness. The city of L.A. hasn’t yet released comprehensive spending estimates for all homelessness programs for this year, for which it originally budgeted $337 million from the general fund.

The city budgeted another $614 million in homelessness spending to come from state and federal grants, as well as taxes or bonds that L.A. city voters passed. (That’s Measure ULA, which sets aside 4% of L.A. city property sales of more than $5 million and allocates them to homeless services, and Proposition HHH, which authorized the city to borrow $1.2 billion to build 10,000 units of housing over a decade.)

The homelessness spending not reflected here also includes city department funds for homelessness-specific services — for example, job support programs for unhoused people through the Economic and Workforce Development Department’s budget, or park encampment cleanup resources through the Recreation and Parks Department’s budget.

The city also contributes money to the joint city-county agency Los Angeles Housing Services Authority, or LAHSA, for its services, including the annual Homeless Count, street outreach and case managers for placing unhoused people into available housing. L.A. County lawmakers recently voted to withdraw its funding for LAHSA and create a new county-run agency. L.A. City Council members are also exploring the possibility of pulling funding for LAHSA. Bass’ budget proposal for the coming fiscal year decreases spending on homelessness by about 5% overall.

More reporting:

• LA City Council votes to explore pulling its funding from beleaguered homelessness agency
• LA County to strip hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars from homelessness agency
• Judge blasts LA homeless spending as a ‘train wreck’ and threatens to seize control
• Will an LA program that diverts mental health calls to clinicians instead of police continue?
• Study finds LA would have more affordable housing if ‘mansion tax’ did not apply to new apartments
• Fraud investigation launched into homeless service provider for LA’s Inside Safe program

Liability claims

This year, the city of L.A. is expected to pay more than $300 million to settle claims and lawsuits against the city for wrongdoing. It’s more than triple the amount the city budgeted for liability claims. That budget has remained at $87 million for the past five years despite payouts regularly amounting to double or triple that amount.

Some of the most expensive settlements include claims over housing discrimination, police use of force and injuries caused by decaying city infrastructure.

More reporting:

• As LA veers toward a financial crisis, $320M in liability payouts play a big role
• LA is on the hook for more than half a billion in liability payouts in just 2 years. 4 of the costliest cases

Sanitation

About 20% of the Bureau of Sanitation’s spending came from the general fund this year. A large portion of the rest came from fees that residents pay for trash, recycling, water usage and other services.

The department has been facing staffing shortages and budget gaps, which is why earlier this year it asked the L.A. City Council to raise trash collection fees. If the rate hikes don’t get approved, the general fund would have to cover about 40% of the department’s expenses in the coming fiscal year, according to the Bureau of Sanitation’s analysis.

More reporting:

• LA trash fees could soon nearly double. Here's what you should know

Street lighting

If the figure shown in this calculator seems small, that’s because it’s not the full amount we actually pay for street lighting services.

Most of this department’s budget comes from an additional property tax that’s specifically for street lighting. If you pull up your property tax bill (see instructions near the top of this story), you’ll see a section called “Direct Assessments.” Underneath that is a line for Los Angeles City Light Maintenance — abbreviated as “City Lt Maint” — that’s most of what you’re contributing to this department’s services.

This fee hasn’t increased since the late 1990s. That has put stress on the department’s budget, which is also seeing rising costs due to copper wire thefts and frequent outages.

Last year’s budget eliminated about 17% of positions from the Bureau of Street Lighting, which were vacant at the time. The mayor’s budget proposal for 2025-26 cuts it by another 7%.

More reporting:

• LA has a backlog of complaints about streetlight outages. Why haven't they been fixed?
• Copper wire thefts leave LA neighborhoods in the dark. Here’s what officials are doing to try to stop it