Tennessee Property Tax Relief: Deadlines, Proration and Repayment

Section 67-5-701 is where the tax relief program's real terms live, and a veteran who reads only 67-5-704 will not find any of them. The deadline is thirty-five days from the date taxes in the jurisdiction become delinquent for that year. It is not a statewide date, because delinquency dates are local. Miss it and subsection (d)(1) deems the taxpayer ineligible for that tax year. The same subdivision then says something that saves people: nothing in it requires payment of the full amount of taxes by the delinquency date as a condition of eligibility. A veteran who cannot pay the bill in full can still apply on time and still be eligible. There is a way back in after a missed deadline and it is discretionary rather than automatic. Subsection (k) authorizes the director of the division of property assessments to waive any deadline imposed by the section on determining that the failure to meet it was excusable for good and reasonable cause, using the phrase as it is used in 67-1-803. The waiver has a hard outer wall: no deadline may be extended beyond December 31 of the year following the tax year. That is the whole of the relief available, and it is narrower than the mandatory multi-year look-backs some states give a veteran whose rating decision arrived late. The program can pay less than the statute promises, and this is the provision that most distinguishes Tennessee. Subsection (e)(3): if the comptroller determines that annual appropriations will be insufficient to permit full payment of claims reflecting the income and value standards established in the part or in the annual appropriations act, the comptroller shall calculate and apply a factor to uniformly adjust individual payments so all timely claims can be paid within the appropriation. The $175,000 is a ceiling on the claim rather than a guarantee of the money, and the adjustment is uniform across every recipient rather than rationed by order of application. Overpayments have a two-year wall. Under subsection (g)(2) a person who received tax relief in error must repay, but there is a bar against collection unless demand is made within two years following the due date for the tax year the erroneous payments relate to. The person may reapply for a later year while still owing, either by paying the repayment in full or by applying half of each year's relief against the balance until it is cleared. The most important sentence in that subdivision is the last one. Repayment shall not be required where the Social Security Administration, the Department of Human Services, the Veterans' Administration, the Railroad Retirement Board or a similar entity first determines a person eligible for property tax relief and later determines the person was ineligible. A veteran whose rating VA reduces or reverses after the state has already paid does not owe the money back. That protection does not extend to a person who willfully provided false information, who under subsection (g)(1) repays immediately and in full with penalty and interest. Two smaller rules that decide cases. Subsection (f) allows relief on only one place of residence per tax year, and only one recipient per property per taxing jurisdiction. Subsection (i) treats a contiguous parcel that a government acquisition has split into noncontiguous parcels as still one parcel, for acquisitions on or after January 1, 1981. Financial records filed for income verification are confidential under subsection (m) and outside the Tennessee public records law, though that subsection is written against 67-5-701 through 67-5-703. The confidentiality of a veteran's disability record comes from 67-5-704(i) instead.