Every homestead home splits $350 million, if it is on the list by November 1
Every homestead home splits $350 million, if it is on the list by November 1
2026-09-15 · Ohio · Legislation
Ohio has put $350,000,000 into a new Property Tax Relief Fund and will divide it equally among every homestead-exemption property in the state. The credit is flat per home, it is applied automatically, and the gate is a county auditor headcount taken on November 1, 2026.1
Amended Substitute House Bill 479 of the 136th General Assembly, primary sponsor Representative Jean Schmidt (R, District 62), passed both chambers on June 10, 2026. Appropriations took effect June 24, 2026 and the act takes effect September 23, 2026.
The money
Section 12(C)(3) of the act makes the transfer: “Third, $350,000,000 cash to the Property Tax Relief Fund (Fund 5EA1), which is hereby created in the state treasury.”
And Section 12(F) appropriates it: “Fund 5EA1 shall be used by the Tax Commissioner to make payments under Section 19 of H.B. 479 of the 136th General Assembly. An amount necessary to make those payments and up to $500,000 for implementation costs are hereby appropriated from Fund 5EA1.”
How it is divided
Section 19(C) of the act sets the arithmetic, and the operative word is the numerator:
“The reduction shall equal the balance of the Property Tax Relief Fund…less any amounts expended for implementation costs…multiplied by a fraction, the numerator of which is one and the denominator of which is the total number of eligible homes, with the final amount rounded down to the nearest dollar. The reduction shall be applied entirely against the first-half tax bill issued for eligible homes for that applicable tax year, unless the reduction would exceed that bill, in which case the excess shall be applied against the second-half tax bill.”
One over the number of eligible homes. Every qualifying property gets the same dollar amount, regardless of value.
The gate
Section 19(B): “By November 1, 2026, a county auditor shall certify to the Commissioner the number of homestead exemption properties in the county as of that date.”
And the definition at Section 19(A)(1): “'Homestead exemption property' means a homestead that qualifies for a reduction in taxes under division (A) of section 323.152 of the Revised Code for tax year 2026 or a manufactured or mobile home that qualifies for a reduction in taxes under section 4503.065 of the Revised Code for tax year 2027.”
County treasurers then certify the totals back to the Tax Commissioner by March 17, 2027 for first-half bills and September 9, 2027 for second-half.
Tax relief lands on the same households a board chases for arrears. Our Ohio collections and liens page covers the association's side.
Why a flat credit favours condominium and planned communities
The credit does not scale with property value. A 900-square-foot condominium unit receives exactly the same dollar reduction as a large detached house in the same county.
That is unusual in Ohio property-tax relief, which normally runs as a percentage of taxes owed, and it works in favour of dense communities. An association whose members hold modest units — and particularly one with a high proportion of owners aged 65 or older or disabled veterans, who are the core homestead-exemption population — sees proportionally more benefit per household than a low-density community of higher-value homes. Our Ohio assessment limits page covers how that interacts with the association's own budget.
The six-week job for a board or manager
Here is the actionable part, and the window is short.
Owners already receiving the homestead exemption need to do nothing. The credit is applied automatically to the first-half tax year 2026 bill, payable in 2027. There is no form.
Owners who are eligible but have never applied get nothing. If they are not on the county auditor's rolls when the headcount is taken, their home is not an eligible home, and there is no later catch-up in the statute.
That is a real population in Ohio associations: an owner who turned 65 recently, an owner who became disabled, a surviving spouse, a disabled veteran who never filed. Every association with senior owners has some. A single notice to the membership between now and mid-October is the entire intervention, and a board is in a better position to send it than anyone else.
Do not print a single statewide application deadline. The statute fixes only November 1, 2026, and that is the auditor's certification date, not an application cutoff. County auditors set their own administrative deadlines working back from it, and the ones published vary. Tell owners to check with their own county auditor, and tell them this month.
The rest of what HB 479 does
The act is a mid-biennium corrections vehicle and it amends a long list of sections, including R.C. 319.301, 323.152, 4503.065, 5705.31, 5705.316, 5713.08, 5715.23 and 5715.27 — several of which are the same property-tax machinery rewritten in the December 2025 package.
It also amends R.C. 303.12 and 519.12, the county and township zoning-amendment procedure statutes. What it changed there is worth a board's attention in any community governed by township zoning, and it is not something we have read; anyone relying on it should pull those sections directly.
One accuracy note
The bill's status history records a line-item veto receipt in the House on June 25, 2026 and does not carry an explicit signing row, and the Governor's office announcements for that period were unreachable. The appropriations took effect June 24, 2026, which is the operative date for the transfer. The September 23, 2026 effective date and every quoted passage above come from the enrolled act itself.
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