Choosing Between the Three Kansas Property Tax Refunds

Kansas runs three property tax refund programs a veteran might reach, and 79-4508a(d) forbids taking more than one for the same property in the same tax year. A taxpayer is not eligible for a refund under 79-4508a if they have received, for that property for that tax year, either a homestead property tax refund under 79-4508 or the selective assistance for effective senior relief credit under 79-32,263. The choice is real and it is not obvious. The ordinary homestead refund under 79-4508 computes a refund against property taxes accrued, but 79-4509(a) deems anything above $700 to be $700. Whatever the bill, the base of the computation stops there. The freeze under 79-4508a has no ceiling. It refunds the whole difference between this year's bill and the base year's bill. In year one that difference is zero and the claim is worth nothing at all. It grows every year the mill levy or the appraisal rises, and after a decade in a rising market it can be worth several times what the homestead refund could ever pay. SAFESR, the credit under 79-32,263, is a refund of a percentage of property taxes paid and is restricted to claimants sixty-five and older. It is not a veterans program and a disabled veteran under sixty-five cannot reach it. So the shape of the decision is this. A veteran who has just qualified, or has just bought the house, gets nothing from the freeze and should look at the homestead refund. A veteran who qualified years ago and has watched the bill climb should look at the freeze. The crossover happens when the accumulated growth in the bill exceeds what the $700-capped computation returns, and because the freeze's base year cannot precede 2021, nobody's freeze is yet more than a handful of years deep. Two further constraints. Section 79-4502(e) requires domicile in Kansas for the entire preceding calendar year for any of these claims. And the base-year appraised value test of $350,000 in 79-4508a has no counterpart in 79-4508, so a veteran in an expensive house may find the freeze closed and the homestead refund open. The programs also differ in who may claim. The homestead refund reaches a disabled veteran at 50 percent, a surviving spouse of a member who died in the line of duty, a person with a disability, a person fifty-five or older, and a low-income person with dependent children. The freeze reaches only a disabled veteran at 50 percent or a person sixty-five or older. Section 79-4508a(f) makes the freeze part of and supplemental to the homestead property tax refund act, so the administrative machinery, the deadlines and the definitions are shared even though the computations are not.