Florida Senior Property Tax Relief: Does Your County Offer It?

Florida senior property tax relief comes from a homestead exemption of up to $50,000, the Save Our Homes assessment cap, and two extra breaks for owners 65 and older.1 You claim each one through your county property appraiser.

The two age-65 breaks aren't statewide. Your county or city has to vote them in, so what your neighbor in the next county gets, you might not.

In This Guide

• The Homestead Exemption: Where Florida Senior Property Tax Relief Starts
• Save Our Homes: The Assessment Cap
• Extra Florida Senior Property Tax Relief at 65: Does Your County Offer It?
• Are You Under the Income Limit?
• If You Don't Qualify for the Senior Exemptions
• Keeping the Exemption If You Leave Home for Care
• How to Apply
• Frequently Asked Questions

The Homestead Exemption: Where Florida Senior Property Tax Relief Starts

Start here, because every other break builds on it. If you own a home in Florida and make it your permanent residence, or the permanent residence of your dependent, the property may be eligible for the homestead exemption.1 That second route gets missed. The exemption is worth up to $50,000, and it's set in Florida Statute 196.031.1

Is the home in a trust? You can still claim homestead if the trust's terms entitle you to use and occupy the home. The Department of Revenue's rule treats that as sufficient title.2 So does a right to possess the home under an instrument granting you a beneficial interest for life, by statute, if you meet the residence requirement.2 A trust that gives you no present right to possess the home doesn't support the claim.2

The $50,000 isn't a flat block. It comes in two layers:1

• The first $25,000 comes off your assessed value for all property taxes, including school district taxes.1
• An additional exemption of up to $25,000 applies to the assessed value over $50,000, and it does not apply to school taxes.1

Take a hypothetical home assessed at $60,000. The first layer takes $25,000 off for every tax. The second layer reaches only the value above $50,000, which here is $10,000, and it comes off non-school taxes only.1

That second layer is no longer a flat $25,000. It is adjusted every January 1 for inflation, using the change in the Consumer Price Index whenever that change is positive, so both it and the $50,000 total now run above the round figures.1 The Department of Revenue's Additional Homestead Exemption Adjustment table (revised January 2026) lists the maximum amount of that additional exemption as $26,411 for 2026, after a 2.7 percent change in the index. It lists $25,722 for 2025 and $25,000 for the 2024 base year.1 That $26,411 caps the second layer only. It isn't the whole homestead exemption, and the table prints no combined total, so we don't state one.

Save Our Homes starts only after a home receives the homestead exemption, and the two senior breaks are additional homestead exemptions.1

Save Our Homes: The Assessment Cap

This protection isn't one of the age-65 breaks. After the first year your home receives the homestead exemption, the Save Our Homes cap limits how much its assessed value can rise each year.1

The cap is the lesser of 3 percent or the change in the Consumer Price Index. Market value can climb 15 percent in a hot year. Your assessed value, the number your taxes are based on, can't go up more than 3 percent. The rule is Florida Statute 193.155.1

Hold a homesteaded house through a market boom and the cap keeps applying every year, no matter how fast market value climbs.1

Moving to Another Florida Home: Portability

Selling a long-held homesteaded house? A homeowner moving from a previous Florida homestead to a new homestead in Florida may be able to transfer, or "port," all or part of the homestead assessment difference.1

To transfer the Save Our Homes benefit, you must establish a homestead exemption for the new home within three years of January 1 of the year you abandoned the old homestead, not three years after the sale.1 File the Transfer of Homestead Assessment Difference (Form DR-501T) with the homestead exemption application (Form DR-501). The deadline to file these forms is March 1.1

Missed March 1 for the transfer? Under Florida Statute 193.155(8)(j), a qualified person may still file the application and petition the value adjustment board to grant the assessment. The petition may be filed at any time during the taxable year on or before the 25th day following the mailing of the property appraiser's notice under section 194.011(1), with a nonrefundable $15 fee.1 The appraiser or the board may grant the assessment if you are qualified and show particular extenuating circumstances they judge to warrant it.1

Under 193.155(8)(k), a qualified person who fails to timely file for the new homestead in the first year following eligibility may file in a subsequent year. The reduction is applied to assessed value in the year the transfer is first approved, and refunds of tax may not be made for previous years.1

Which calculation applies depends on the tax roll. Florida Statute 193.155(8)(a) and (8)(b) set the calculation and its $500,000 limit. The Florida Legislature's page prints both paragraphs with a note that the amendments chapter 2026-239 made to section 193.155 first apply to the 2027 ad valorem tax roll.1 That makes the wording before those amendments, printed in the 2025 Florida Statutes, the version for the 2026 tax roll. It is stated in terms of the "immediate prior homestead":1

• 2026 tax roll, a new home worth the same or more. If the new homestead's just value as of January 1 is greater than or equal to the immediate prior homestead's just value as of January 1 of the year it was abandoned, the new homestead is assessed at its just value minus the lesser of $500,000 or the difference between the immediate prior homestead's just value and assessed value as of that January 1.1
• 2026 tax roll, a new home worth less. Its assessed value equals its just value divided by the just value of the immediate prior homestead and multiplied by the assessed value of the immediate prior homestead. Where the difference between just value and the assessed value so calculated is greater than $500,000, the assessed value is increased so the difference equals $500,000.1

From the 2027 tax roll, the Legislature's current page prints amended wording of both paragraphs, stated in terms of the "prior homestead," with the same $500,000 limit.1 If you are unsure which roll your transfer lands on, ask your county property appraiser which calculation applies, and what it comes to, before you sell or buy.

Extra Florida Senior Property Tax Relief at 65: Does Your County Offer It?

On top of the standard homestead exemption, Florida lets counties and cities offer two additional exemptions to owners 65 and older. Both come from Florida Statute 196.075.1

These are local-option exemptions. The state authorizes them, but each county or municipality has to adopt them by ordinance. Some have. Some haven't.1

The Department of Revenue's Find a County Official page has a county drop-down menu that takes you to your county property appraiser's website.3 Start there, and ask which exemptions your county and your city adopted.

There's a second limit to know before you count the savings. Where these exemptions are adopted, they apply only to the tax millage the county or city levies, and they do not apply to the millage of school districts or other taxing units.1 So they come off part of your tax bill, not the whole of it.

The two senior breaks work differently:

• The additional senior exemption knocks off assessed value for a person 65 or older who holds legal or equitable title, is a permanent resident, and whose household income is at or below the limit.1 The statute caps it at $50,000, but the adopting ordinance sets the actual amount and may set it well below that, so check what your own county and city adopted before you plan around $50,000.1
• The longtime-resident senior exemption is the bigger one, and the harder one to qualify for. It is an exemption equal to the assessed value of the home. To get it you must be 65 or older, meet the same income limit, have lived in the home for at least 25 years, and have a home whose just value is under $250,000 as determined in the first tax year you apply and are eligible.1 Ask the appraiser how a later rise in value is treated.

Are You Under the Income Limit?

Both senior exemptions use the same income limit. For the 2026 exemption year, your household income must not exceed $38,686.1 Palm Beach County's property appraiser describes its 2026 limit as based on the prior year's income.1 Ask your own county property appraiser which year's income it uses. The limitation is adjusted annually under Florida Statute 196.075 and published each year by the Florida Department of Revenue. It was $37,694 for 2025.1

Read the definition before you rule yourself out. "Household income" here means adjusted gross income as defined in section 62 of the Internal Revenue Code, for all members of the household.1

Income that never enters adjusted gross income does not count toward the limitation. That includes non-taxable Social Security benefits and tax-exempt bond interest.1 So a senior whose gross receipts exceed $38,686 may still qualify.1

You report household income on the sworn statement of household income you file with the property appraiser.1

Own the home jointly with right of survivorship? The owner who lives there and otherwise qualifies may receive the entire additional exemption, not a share of it.1

If You Don't Qualify for the Senior Exemptions

Being over the income limit, or living where no ordinance was adopted, costs you the two senior exemptions. It doesn't cost you the rest. The income limit is a condition of those two exemptions.1 The standard homestead exemption turns on owning the home and making it your permanent residence, or a dependent's.1

Check both of your local governments. A county or a city may adopt either or both senior exemptions, and each one applies only to the millage of the government that adopted it.1

Look at the rest of the application, too. Form DR-501 lists further benefits you can apply for in addition to the homestead exemption, including several for disabled veterans.3 Our guide to the Florida disabled veteran property tax exemption covers those. Apart from the veteran benefits, the table on Form DR-501 (R. 01/26) lists:1

• $5,000 exemptions for a widowed person, for a blind person, and for a totally and permanently disabled person, each under Florida Statute 196.202.1
• An exemption from all taxes for total and permanent disability, quadriplegic, under Florida Statute 196.101.1
• An exemption from all taxes for certain total and permanent disabilities, for a person with limited income who is hemiplegic, paraplegic, requires a wheelchair for mobility, or is legally blind.1
• An exemption from all taxes for a first responder totally and permanently disabled in the line of duty or the surviving spouse, and for the surviving spouse of a first responder who died in the line of duty.1

The form says its table does not contain all the requirements that determine eligibility, and that some exemptions or benefits may require additional applications.1 Your county property appraiser makes the final determination, so ask the office what else fits your situation.1

If the bill itself is the problem, ask about tax deferral. Under Florida Statute 197.252, any person entitled to claim the homestead exemption under section 196.031(1) may apply to defer payment of a portion of the combined total of ad valorem taxes, non-ad valorem assessments, and interest accumulated on a tax certificate.1 An approved application defers:

• At 65 or older, the combined total of ad valorem taxes and non-ad valorem assessments that exceeds 3 percent of your household income for the prior calendar year. Younger than 65, it's the amount over 5 percent.1
• The entire amount if your household income for the previous calendar year is less than $10,000, or is less than the designated amount for the additional homestead exemption under section 196.075 and you are 65 or older.1

The sources we read put no dollar figure on that "designated amount," and they don't give us the deferral law's own definition of household income. Ask your county tax collector how the office counts income and what figure it applies.

Florida Statute 197.2423 sets the rest:

• Apply every year to the county tax collector, on or before March 31 following the year in which the taxes and non-ad valorem assessments are assessed.1
• Deferral is a lien. The application form must advise you of the conditions under which deferred taxes, assessments, and interest become due, payable, and delinquent, and that all tax deferrals constitute a priority tax lien on your property.1 We don't list those conditions here, so read them on the form before you sign.
• You must furnish proof of fire and extended coverage insurance in an amount at least equal to the total of all outstanding liens, including a lien for deferred taxes, non-ad valorem assessments, and interest, with a loss payable clause to the tax collector.1
• Existing debt can bar it. A deferral may not be granted if the total of deferred taxes, non-ad valorem assessments, and interest, plus all other unsatisfied liens on the property, exceeds 85 percent of the property's just value, or if the primary mortgage financing is for an amount that exceeds 70 percent of just value.1

Keeping the Exemption If You Leave Home for Care

A hospital or rehab stay doesn't by itself end your homestead. Under the Department of Revenue's abandonment rule, a temporary absence, regardless of the reason, will not deprive the property of its homestead character, provided an abiding intention to return is always present.4 That intention isn't judged by your words. It's a conclusion drawn from all the facts.4

Renting the house out is different. Renting all or substantially all of a homesteaded dwelling is treated as abandoning it as a homestead, and the abandonment continues until the owner physically occupies it again.5 There is one cushion. A rental that starts after January 1 doesn't affect that year's exemption unless the property is rented for more than 30 days per calendar year for 2 consecutive years.5 Talk to your property appraiser before you sign a lease.

How to Apply

You apply through your county property appraiser, not the state. Florida law requires the exemption application to be filed with the county property appraiser, on forms the Department of Revenue prescribes.3 The Department says to submit it in the county where the property is located.3

If you missed March 1, file anyway, and fast. A qualified applicant can still file with the property appraiser on or before the 25th day after the appraiser mails the notices required under section 194.011(1) of the Florida Statutes.6 Bring evidence of why you were late. The appraiser may grant the exemption on sufficient evidence of extenuating circumstances.6

If the appraiser says no, you may petition the value adjustment board.6 Postal error is its own exception: document it clearly and the board must grant the exemption.6 Ask the appraiser's office when those notices go out.

Watch for renewal. Once an original application is granted, the property appraiser mails a renewal application each year on or before February 1.6 A county may waive that annual application after the first one is granted. Even then, you must refile when the property is sold, ownership changes, or your status changes in a way that changes the exemption.6 The senior exemptions hinge on income, so ask the appraiser what the office needs from you each year to keep them.

If property taxes are part of a larger question about how to fund care, our guide to paying for senior care in Florida covers Medicaid, VA benefits, and the other pieces. For the national picture, see how to pay for senior care. And if tapping the home itself is on the table, selling or renting a home to pay for care weighs that against the homestead protections you'd be giving up.

Learn More

Find personalized help claiming Florida senior property tax relief at brevy.com.

The information on Brevy.com is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional legal, financial, or medical advice. Rules vary by state and program and change frequently. Always verify with the relevant agency or a qualified professional. Brevy is not a law firm, financial advisor, or healthcare provider.