Property owners in Howard County have until July 15 to file paperwork to ensure they continue to receive the homestead credit on their residential property taxes.
The state deadline for verification of the homestead credit was Dec. 31, after that date the homestead credit was to be removed. The homestead credit can amount to up to 25 percent of the gross property taxes owed.
Martha Lake, Howard County auditor, said local residential property owners have until July 15 to complete the required form.
“We discovered that approximately 800 property owners, out of 23,000 residential property owners in the county, had not submitted the verification form,” she said. “If the forms are not returned by July 15, the property owner will lose the homestead exemption starting with this year’s taxes.”
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The effort to fight homestead credit fraud by requiring residential property owners to fill out an additional form seems to be working.
Lake told members of the Howard County Council Tuesday that since the process began, more than $613,000 has been collected and placed in the Homestead Ineligible Fund.
The council approved spending $100,000 of those funds to begin digitizing records in the auditor’s office.
Lake said starting today only $100,000 per year is allowed to be placed in the Homestead Ineligible Fund with the remaining amount being directed to the county’s general fund.
The remaining $513,000 collected to date will remain in the fund to be used only by the auditor’s office.
Under state law, a property owner with an ineligible homestead credit deduction can be required to pay back taxes for three years plus a 10 percent penalty.
All the collected taxes are placed into a local fund along with 90 percent of the money generated from the penalty. The remaining 10 percent of the penalty revenue goes to the state.
In the future, the fund that takes in tax revenue could be used to buy equipment or to pay employee salaries to further the process.
