Elbert County Tax Commissioner (Lorrie Higginbotham): the route through the assessors, the November 15 due date, and the board’s FLOST referendum that offsets the county’s floating homestead

The exemptions are Georgia's: O.C.G.A. 48-5-48 for the qualifying disabled veteran and 48-5-52.1 for the unremarried surviving spouse of a service member killed in a war or armed conflict - the State entries carry the statutes, the qualification list and the yearly indexed amount. What Elbert's offices add is the route and the county's own floating homestead. Where and who. Tax Commissioner Lorrie Higginbotham, 45 Forest Avenue, P.O. Box 603, Elberton, GA 30635; phone (706) 283-2018, fax (706) 283-8144, [email protected]; "Monday - Friday 8 am - 5:00 pm". The commissioner's own Government Window site, elbertcountypay.com, prints the General Information page: "Generally, Elbert County real estate and business personal property taxes are due by November 15", and the homestead section: "To receive the benefit of the homestead exemption, the taxpayer must file an initial application. In Elbert County the application is filed with the assessor. Please contact them at 706-283-2008 ... the application must be received by April 1st of the year for which the exemption is first claimed by the taxpayer." On local exemptions: "local governments are authorized to provide for increased exemption amounts, also know as local exemptions. Elbert county has such an exemption. The local county exemptions supersede the state exemptions when the local exemption amount is greater than the state amount." The page prints no veteran amounts, and the qPublic record-search site (qpublic.net/ga/elbert) answers a Cloudflare-style block (403) to plain fetch and was not read (the gap goes to docs/COUNTY-REVISIT.md). The floating homestead and the FLOST. The board's June 9, 2025 minutes carry item 31: "a Resolution Calling for a Referendum at the November 2025 election to impose a FLOST for the sole purpose of property tax relief to offset the effect of the floating homestead exemption", with Chairman Vaughn explaining that the State's act "allows counties the option to vote in a 1% sales tax increase ... that extra 1% could only be used to reduce the millage rate" and Administrator Hulme estimating "roughly a 2mill reduction in the property tax"; "The motion passed 5-0." The November 10, 2025 minutes carry the Tax Commissioner's own report: "Mrs. Higginbotham stated HB 581 and the new exemptions were a problem for the software vendor, therefore, tax bills could not be sent out on time. The issues were resolved at the end of October ... Tax bills should be sent out in December and will be due sometime in January 2026." A veteran files with the Tax Assessor's Office before the April 1 deadline and reads the amounts on the State entries.