You have less than a week until the extended deadline to file your St. Joseph County property tax exemptions for the 2007 pay 2008 tax year arrives – it is October 15th.
To file go to the County City Building at the address below. Find the recorder’s office to get your property tax ID number, owner of your loan, loan balance, and recording number. Take this information to the auditor’s office to file your exemptions. You will receive paper receipts. Save these – if the auditor’s office can’t locate a record of your exemptions, you will need these original receipts to prove you filed the exemptions.
The location to file in St Joseph County is:
227 West Jefferson, 2nd Floor. 574-235-9529
The deadline used to be in March, right? What changed?
Also, it’s probably worth mentioning that this only needs to be filed once, not repeated annually.
Yes, the deadline used to be in March but it was extended, as I understand it, for this year only. And yep, you only need to file this once unless there is a change in title (sale, add/delete a party, etc.). When in doubt about ANY change in title, file it again to make sure.
When I realized the exemption filing deadline had been extended to Oct 15, I called every client that purchased a home using my services from 2006 and 2005 that should have filed homestead exemptions just to make sure they did. There were 5 clients out of approx 40 that had forgotten to file. These clients were then able to file by the extended deadline and saved thousands of dollors that would have had to be paid in higher property tax bills. This is one advantage of using a Realtor that cares to assist you in buying a home. If these folks had purchased without representation, no one would have taken the time to makes sure hteir exemptions were filed and they would be paying the highest tax possible instead of the lowest.
What is the difference between the Homestead and the Mortgage credits? I called the auditors office in St. Joe County and they said I was registered for the Homestead, but later found out there’s a Mortgage Credit too. If you sign up for one, are you automatically signed up for the other?
Hi Jeff. Homestead credit is given to people who own the residence and live in it as their primary residence. Mortgage credit is given if you carry a mortgage on the residence (regardless of who lives in it and how many homes you may own). You’re not automatically signed up for either. You need to pro-actively take all the necessary paperwork to the City County building and file for each (if you qualify) separately. Once you do file, you’re good to go for as long as you live in that home and have that mortgage. If you refinance your mortgage, you guessed it…you need to go back and file for the mortgage exemption again.