Written by Brian Massie, Executive Director / April 2, 2022

In our continuing efforts to provide a service to Lake County taxpayers, we thought we should share what have learned about the recent Homestead Exemption flyer sent to all current residents.

The form (shown below) is sent to even those residents that are not subject to the income limitation requirements (grandfather status) because they received the homestead exemption in 2013. If that applies to you, then you are not subject to the annual income limitation of $34,600 for the 2022 application period, and you will automatically get the credit on your property tax bill. You would only return the flyer if you have any changes to report.

“Note: Homeowners who received a homestead exemption credit for tax year 2013 will not be subject to the income requirement even if they move to another Ohio residence. In other words, the grandfather status is “portable”.”  (from Auditor’s website)

If you are not sure if you received the credit in 2013, then you will have to call the Auditor’s office and ask them. [(440) 350-2532 ext. 1]

Auditor Chris Galloway does a great job explaining the details of the Homestead Exemption on the Auditor’s website, so we will not restate the information.

Here is the website:

Homestead Exemption

Here is the front and back of the form we recently received from the Auditor’s office.

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Editorial opinion by Brian Massie:

We received the following comments from the Auditor’s office:

“The form was sent to everyone who is on the Homestead exemption.  If the taxpayer does not remember when they signed up they can call and check with us.  But with the change that social security is not counted toward the income limit that excludes a good many of the people.”

The following statistics were provided by the Lake County Auditor’s office. LFC calculated the “% of Totals”, and the “Average Reduction in Property Taxes”.

So we can see that the average Homestead Exemption is worth $505.04.

Unfortunately, there are no statistics for the number of Lake County seniors that do not get the Homestead Exemption.

We believe that it is grossly unfair that the politicians changed the Homestead Exemption rules in 2014 to tie it to annual income.

If we continue on the current path of ever-increasing property taxes, we will surely price our seniors and those living on fixed incomes out of their homes that they have worked all their lives to achieve.

Taxpayers need to come together and “lobby” our State politicians to provide property tax relief to ALL seniors.

We will allow comments to gauge the interest of Lake County residents in this issue.

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Categories: Lake County - General

Tags: Property Tax