In three counties and one town, homeowners 65 and older can lower the property-tax charge on a primary residence, but the programs work in different ways and cap income at figures from $38,686 in Collier County, Florida, to $63,470 in Blount County, Tennessee. Maricopa County, Arizona, sets its limits at $47,712 for one owner and $59,640 for two or more, and Huntington, New York, at $58,400. The first filing deadlines to arrive are March 1 in Collier County and Huntington.
The word freeze covers two different things in these places. Blount County’s Property Tax Freeze Program locks all or part of a homeowner’s county tax bill, while Maricopa County’s Senior Value Protection locks only the value the assessor uses to compute the bill. Collier County and Huntington do not freeze anything. They take dollars off the taxable value of the home.
Blount freezes the bill and Maricopa freezes the value
The Maricopa County Assessor says Senior Value Protection holds the Limited Property Value of a primary residence at a fixed level for three years, with renewal required every three years. The assessor’s page is direct about the limit of the program: it does not freeze the tax bill, which can still change when the Board of Supervisors sets rates. That makes it a cap on one input rather than a promise about the final bill.
Blount County’s Trustee runs the opposite design. Homeowners who are 65 or older by the end of the tax year can freeze all or a portion of their county property taxes on the principal residence and a state-limited portion of the land under it. The Trustee does not set the frozen amount, and the freeze holds only as long as the owner keeps reapplying. The page says applicants must apply and be approved every year.
For a homeowner in any of these places, the first question is whether household income, counted the way that place counts it, falls under the cap. Social Security counts in all of them. Maricopa County averages income from all sources over three years and names Social Security and veterans’ disability pay, Huntington says Social Security counts, and Blount lists Social Security, pensions, salary, interest, dividends and capital gains. The second question is which date to file by.
Retirement deadlines, in your inbox: Miss an enrollment or claim deadline and the money can be gone. Join the Retirement Money Brief and we’ll send you our Property Tax & Utility Relief Finder as a welcome gift.
Get the Brief + the relief finder →
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
Tennessee adopted the freeze option in July 2007, and Blount County followed in December 2007. Applications for the 2026 tax year are due April 5, 2027, and the Trustee’s office takes questions at (865) 273-5900. The applicant must be an owner on the recorded deed, and the house must be the principal residence. The state adjusts the income limit slightly in most years, so the $63,470 figure for 2025 income can move.
Collier County and Huntington cut taxable value
Collier County, Florida, gives seniors an additional homestead exemption of up to $50,000. The property appraiser requires the owner to be 65 by January 1 of the tax roll year, with 2025 household adjusted gross income that does not exceed $38,686 for the 2026 roll. Applicants file Form DR-501 and Form DR-501SC, along with supporting documents for each member of the household.
A second Collier exemption reaches further for lower-value homes. Seniors who meet the income limit and affirm that their permanent residence has been on the same property for at least 25 years can receive an exemption equal to the assessed value of the homestead, as long as the just value was under $250,000 in the first qualifying year. The appraiser’s office hands out the sworn statement for that exemption at (239) 252-8141.
Huntington, on Long Island, runs a limited-income exemption for seniors that reduces the taxable value of a home owned by someone who is 65 or older by December 31 of the application year. The Town Assessor sets the maximum income at $58,400 for both the town and the county, and Social Security counts toward that total. The page does not list the percentage reductions, so the Assessor’s office at (631) 351-3226 answers that question for a given household.
Documented medical and prescription drug costs that the owner actually paid can be deducted from income in Huntington, though anything reimbursed by insurance cannot. For a retired couple sitting near the $58,400 line, that deduction can decide which side of the cap the household lands on.
Filing dates run from March 1 to September 1
Maricopa County takes Senior Value Protection applications from January 1 through September 1 of the tax year, so the 2026 window has closed. An application received after the deadline is processed for the following tax year, which means a homeowner who missed it files again beginning January 1, 2027. The assessor asks for the first two pages of the 2025, 2024 and 2023 federal 1040 returns, or SSA-1099 and other 1099 forms if no returns were filed.
Collier County and Huntington share the same date of March 1. In Huntington, applications go out at the end of December, a renewal form is mailed automatically in December to existing recipients, and the Assessor accepts only mailed or hand-delivered forms, not email or fax. If March 1 falls on a weekend, the deadline moves to the following Monday. In Collier County, a recipient whose income rises past the limit must notify the appraiser in writing by May 1 of the tax year.
Missing a date costs a different amount in each place. In Collier County, a missed March 1 means a year without up to $50,000 off the taxable value. In Blount County, a missed April 5 means the 2026 bill is not frozen. In Maricopa County, the form simply rolls to the next tax year, but the value protection it would have set for 2026 never starts.
The four income caps do not measure the same thing, which is why a single household can clear some and fail others. A couple with $55,000 of qualifying income is under Maricopa County’s $59,640 limit for two owners, under Huntington’s $58,400 and under Blount County’s $63,470, but over Collier County’s $38,686. Maricopa averages three years, Collier uses one year of adjusted gross income, and Huntington allows a medical-expense deduction.
The phone numbers on each page are the fastest way to confirm the current-year limit before gathering paperwork. The pattern across all four is the same: the benefit starts with a filing, and the cost of a late filing is a full year.
Does the household clear the cap where the house is?
A senior property-tax break fails on details more often than on eligibility: a missed March 1, a three-year income average read as one year, a freeze on value mistaken for a freeze on the bill. In Maricopa County a late form rolls to the next tax year, and in Blount County the freeze has to be approved again every year.
The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit sorts these programs by what they do. It covers the 5 kinds of property-tax relief, the circuit-breaker credit that includes renters, and an application log and renewal calendar for tracking dates like April 5 and March 1.
Part 2 of the kit walks through reading a tax bill line by line, which is where a homeowner finds out whether an exemption was ever applied.
Get the property-tax relief guide with the application log and renewal calendar →
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
