Minnesota Homeowners and Renters Can File for Property Tax Refunds
Are you leaving money on the table? Minnesota’s Property Tax Refund may be one of those “best-kept secrets” that many residents ignore. The refund is available for both renters and homeowners. But about 1 in 3 people who are eligible don’t file their application.
According to Minnesota Public Radio, the average refund in recent years has been around $900 – nothing to sneeze at! If you own your home and meet the income limit, you probably qualify. Renters who claimed the refund got an average of $654 back in their pocket.
You have up to two years to file for your refund. But time is running out for 2019: refund applications must be submitted by August 15.
Who is Eligible?
For homeowners, there are two types of refunds:
Regular: for those who lived in their home on January 2, 2021, and whose household income for 2020 was less than $116,180.
Special: those who owned and lived in their home on January 2, 2020, and January 2, 2021, and had a net property tax increase of more than 12% AND at least $100, and the increase was not due to improvements you made.
File for your Homestead Property Tax Refund Online
For renters, the qualification is a bit more complicated. The Minnesota Department of Revenue lists the following situations, all of which must be true in order to qualify:
- You are a Minnesota resident, or you are not a Minnesota resident but spent more than 183 days in the state.
- You cannot be claimed as a dependent on someone else’s federal tax return.
- Your household income for 2020 was less than $62,960 for a maximum refund of $2,190
- Your lived in a building where the owner was assessed property taxes or made “payments in lieu of property taxes.” If you are unsure if either of these are true, contact the property owner.
To file for the Renters’ refund, you need to fill out Form M1PR and submit along with a Certificate of Rent Paid (CRP) that you should have received from your landlord in January. You can also now declare additional nontaxable income using Form M1PR-AI.
More information is on the Homestead Credit Refund and Renters Property Tax Refund is available from the Department of Revenue. You can check the status of your refund by using the Where’s My Refund tool on their website.
About the Author:
Amanda Welliver
Helping people find homes has been a passion of mine and I am glad to be able to do that as a member of the NeighborWorks Home Partners team. As Marketing and Communications Coordinator, I am working to build community online and offline, spread the word about the services we offer, and share the success stories of our customers. I enjoy gardening (in theory; I don’t seem to have the time to keep up with it), volunteering, singing in choirs, finding treasures and deals at thrift stores, and living the hectic life of a parent to teen children.
