Go Check Your Homestead Enrollment

Issues

Go Check Your Homestead Enrollment

A neighbor in the Heights told me this summer that property taxes seem to change every year, but even with rebates, she still pays more every time.

Some version of that has come up at more doors than anything else I have heard this year.

So I went and read what the Legislature actually did about property taxes last session. Two things happened…

1. Created a special rate for data centers

The Legislature cut property taxes for data centers. It created a new tax class for them, set a lower rate, and wrote it into the code. Nobody had to go find out about it. Nobody had to fill anything out. It simply applied.

2. Lowered property taxes… for those who know how to get it

The Legislature also cut property taxes for homeowners, through the homestead reduced rate on primary residences. That relief is real, and for most Montana homeowners it lowered the bill.

It arrived differently, though.

To get it, a homeowner had to know it existed, find their property’s 17-digit geocode, and file an application by a deadline. Most people were enrolled automatically, and that happened only because they had already applied for the 2025 rebate, which was its own form with its own window.

Anyone outside that group had to go get it themselves. And this spring, the state extended the deadline by nearly three weeks because so many people filed at the last minute that the online portal ran into intermittent technical problems.

That extension was the right call. It is also the whole point. One kind of relief was written into the code and applied on its own. The other came with a form, a deadline, and a way to fall through.

A person who misses a form loses the money just as completely as a person who was never offered anything. The bill on the counter looks the same either way.

Enroll for the Homestead reduced rate

Here is why I am writing this in August instead of next February.

The enrollment window for the 2027 tax year is open right now. It opened May 4 and it runs through March 1, 2027.

If your house is already enrolled, you keep the reduced rate and there is nothing for you to do. It stays with the property until something actually changes, like a sale or a move.

If it is not enrolled, you can fix that today at homestead.mt.gov.

Check it even if you are certain. It takes about a minute. You will need your property’s geocode, which you can look up through the Montana Cadastral site, and the state’s verification tool will tell you where you stand.

If it turns out you are not enrolled, the Department of Revenue call center at 406-444-6900 can help, and so can the local field office.

What I will advocate for in Helena

Relief that arrives on its own. If the state decides a primary residence should be taxed at a lower rate, the state already has the information to apply it. Montana knows who owns the house and who lives in it. Making enrollment automatic and permanent, so a homeowner keeps the rate until something actually changes, is a straightforward fix and I will vote for it.

A circuit breaker for fixed incomes. Relief that scales to what a household can actually pay, so a retired couple in a house they paid off in 1994 never loses it to a tax bill. This is the most direct protection available and Montana should have a stronger version of it.

Large industrial property paying its own way. That includes the projects asking for thousands of megawatts. Welcome the jobs, make them pay their own way, and let the people who live nearby have a say before anyone breaks ground.

A homeowner in the Heights should not need a tax attorney to get what the Legislature already voted to give them.