Selling Timber in Georgia: The Rules That Touch Your Sale

A timber sale in Georgia runs the same way it does anywhere: find out what you have, get more than one offer, and sign a written contract before a single tree falls. How to sell timber on your land walks through that order step by step.

This page is the part Georgia does its own way. Four rules touch your sale here:

1. Georgia taxes standing timber once, when it's sold or cut, and who pays depends on how you sell.
2. Your county can require the logger to tell the county before cutting starts.
3. You're owed a ticket for every load that leaves your land.
4. If somebody cuts your timber without permission, the law says they owe you three times its value.

None of these is hard. Each one is easy to miss if nobody tells you, and most people sell timber once or twice in a lifetime. There's no reason you'd know them already.

Georgia taxes your timber once, when it's sold

Most land is taxed every year on its value. Standing timber in Georgia isn't. It's taxed one time, after it's sold or harvested, at 100 percent of what it brought. The rate is your local millage for the year before the sale. That's Georgia Code section 48-5-7.5, and the Department of Revenue's rules in chapter 560-11-5 set out who does what.

The report is a Department of Revenue form called the PT-283T, the Timber Sale or Harvest Report. Who handles it depends on how you sell:

• Lump sum sale (one price for all the timber on a tract). The tax is yours, as the seller. You give the buyer a check or other payment for the tax amount, and the buyer has to send it to the county tax collector with the PT-283T within five business days. If the buyer doesn't send it on, the buyer is personally liable.
• Pay-as-cut sale (paid by the ton or by the load). The buyer reports what was cut and what was paid, product by product, to you and to the county board of tax assessors, within 45 days after the end of each calendar quarter. You send your own copy to the tax assessors within 60 days after the quarter ends.
• You harvest it yourself and sell the wood. You file the report and pay the tax within 45 days after the quarter ends. Because there's no sale price, the value comes from the state's schedule of average standing timber prices, set county by county.

All of that comes from Department of Revenue rule 560-11-5-.03, read in October 2026.

What to do with this: before you sign, ask the buyer how the timber tax will be handled and put it in the contract. This is a property tax. It's separate from the income tax you may owe on the sale, which do I pay taxes on a timber sale covers.

Your county may want to hear from the logger first

Georgia lets each county and city require notice from anyone harvesting standing timber for a mill or woodyard. Many counties do. Under Georgia Code section 12-6-24 (2025 code, read October 2026), the notice is due before the crew goes onto the land if possible, and no later than 24 hours after. Another notice is due within 24 hours after the job ends.

The notice includes a map of the tract and the truck entrance, whether the timber was sold lump sum, by the unit or harvested by the owner, and your name, address and daytime phone number as the seller. That's why a county office may call you about a job you didn't run yourself.

A county can also require the harvester to post a bond or letter of credit, up to $5,000. It can't charge a fee just for receiving the notice. Emanuel County's page is a typical example: one notice form per parcel, two maps and a $5,000 bond.

The logger files the notice, not you. Your job is to ask whether your county requires one and make sure it went in. If the harvest is part of clearing land for building, different local rules can apply, because the statute's protections cover forestry and farm harvests, not development.

A ticket for every load, within 20 days

On a pay-as-cut sale, every truck that leaves your land should come back to you as a scale ticket. The Georgia Forestry Commission's timber security fact sheet says you must receive a ticket for each load within 20 days of it being hauled. The ticket has to show the right tract name, the county where it was cut and the weights. Under Georgia Code section 12-6-23, each load with wrong ticket information is a separate misdemeanor, and lying about who owns the timber being sold can be a felony.

Match the tickets against your contract and your bank deposits as they come in, not at the end. Timber load tickets: what left your land shows what to check on each one.

If someone cuts your timber without permission

Georgia gives a landowner real teeth here. Since 2014, the Forestry Commission's fact sheet says, a landowner whose timber is cut without permission is entitled to three times the fair market value of the timber taken, three times the value of trees damaged, reasonable reforestation costs, and attorney and court fees. If the trespass was willful, a court can add punitive damages. You have four years to file.

The same fact sheet points out that clear property lines protect everybody. A survey, painted lines, or a written agreement with the neighbor all lower the odds of a crew crossing the line. They aren't required. They're cheap insurance. How to find property lines before selling timber covers how to get them marked.

If it already happened, write down everything you know (dates, the crew, the trucks, any contract) and call your local Georgia Forestry Commission office. Someone cut timber on my land without permission has the next steps.

Georgia registers foresters

The Georgia State Board of Registration for Foresters regulates people who practice professional forestry in the state. It sets standards, investigates complaints and can discipline a forester for negligent or incompetent work. You can look up any forester's registration on the Secretary of State's site, and file a complaint the same way.

The Forestry Commission's own advice on timber sales is short: use a registered consulting forester, and talk to your local Commission forester. The Commission sells timber only from state land, so it won't sell yours, but its local foresters will talk with you. Do I need a forestry consultant explains what a consultant does and how they're paid.

What Georgia timber is selling for

The newest free Georgia figures come from University of Georgia Extension's 2026 timber forecast, published in January 2026 for the third quarter of 2025. South Georgia pine sawtimber averaged around $28 a ton standing, and pine pulpwood fell to $9.50. North Georgia pine ran lower, around $22 a ton for sawtimber.

Those are averages across thousands of sales. Your timber isn't average. Access, the size and quality of your trees and how close you are to a mill all move your price, often by more than the gap between North and South Georgia. See Georgia timber prices for every product, and what affects the value of my timber for why your number will differ.

Georgia also publishes something no other state does: the Department of Revenue's owner harvest timber values, a per-ton table set county by county for the timber tax. It's a tax value, so it trails what mills are paying, but it's free, official and specific to your county.

Before you sign in Georgia

• Ask who handles the timber tax, and write it into the contract.
• Ask whether your county requires a harvest notice, and confirm the logger filed it.
• On a pay-as-cut sale, expect a ticket for every load within 20 days.
• Get your lines marked before the crew shows up.
• If you hire a forester, check the registration first.

Your next step this week: find the foresters and timber buyers who work your Georgia county, and call two of them. Nobody can tell you what your timber's worth until somebody walks it.