Keep an eye on homeowner’s exemption

Homeowners in California can get $7,000 knocked off their property tax assessment — and at least $70 off their annual tax bill — by applying for the homeowner’s exemption on their primary residence. Once approved, the exemption should reappear on their property tax bill every year, but as San Francisco resident Sharon Boschert has found, it’s not always automatic.

Although she has qualified for the exemption since 1997, Boschert says that every year for the past 10 years she has had to reapply for it. When she got her notification of assessed value for 2014-15 on July 8, the exemption was missing again.

“I’m beginning to think that the SF Assessor’s Office deliberately is billing us (and perhaps other homeowners?) each year without the Homeowner’s Property Tax Exemption in order to get more tax money if homeowners are not paying attention and don’t challenge this ‘mistake,’ ” Boschert said in an e-mail to the assessor’s office and to me last week.

“Every year we file for a homeowner’s exemption on our property tax, and every year it is granted. Every year, the Notice of Change in Exemption that confirms that we have been granted the exemption states, ‘Once granted, the exemption remains in effect until terminated.’ Our exemption has

never been terminated, to my knowledge, but the Assessor’s Office still pretends it doesn’t exist.”

Boschert subsequently received an e-mail from the assessor’s office that said, “Your Homeowner’s Exemption has been reinstated and I apologize for our System error. Our Office has plans for a new System in the near future and my hope is this will not happen again.”

Edward McCaffrey, a spokesman for the assessor, says such problems are rare. Only a couple of other people have complained about losing their exemption since the office sent out a notice of assessed value in early July. Although the office’s computer system is outdated, requiring “a lot of manual entry,” there is no widespread problem, he says.

The office is investigating why Boschert’s exemption drops off every year.

Her experience should serve as a reminder to check your property tax bill every year to make sure you are getting every exemption you qualify for. In some counties, including San Francisco, assessors send out a notice in July that is “a precursor to the tax bill,” McCaffrey says. In other counties, property owners won’t see their annual assessment until they get their property tax bills in the fall.

The homeowner’s exemption is available to anyone who owned and occupied the home as a principal residence. It can be claimed on one home at a time in California. Homeowners can apply for it, free of charge, by sending a simple form to their county assessor.

Although it is supposed to reappear every year thereafter, it can disappear accidentally if you change the title on your deed because you changed your name, added or deleted a spouse or child or moved a house in and out of a revocable trust in the course of refinancing a mortgage. It’s easy to reclaim the exemption if you still qualify for it, and once reinstated it should stick.

In California, the statewide property tax is 1

The homeowner’s exemption is available to anyone who owned and occupied the home as a principal residence. It can be claimed on one home at a time in California.

percent of assessed value, but the rate can be slightly higher in areas where voters have approved local taxes. In San Francisco, where the tax rate is 1.188 percent, the $7,000 homeowner’s exemption saves about $84 in property tax.

To receive the full exemption, homeowners must file an exemption claim form with their county assessor by Feb. 15. If they file between Feb. 16 and Dec. 10, they can qualify for a partial exemption.

If homeowners lost their exemption because of an assessor’s mistake, they usually can claim it retroactively, even if they have missed the deadline.

In some areas, homeowners who are 65 or older can claim an exemption from certain school parcel taxes, even if they were not yet 65 when the tax was approved. To get it, seniors must fill out an application provided by the school district and include proof of age. The home generally must be their primary residence. In some districts, they must renew the exemption each year.

There is usually no way to tell from a property tax bill whether a senior exemption is available. Homeowners should look at their bill and contact each school district that levies a property tax and ask.

Airline fees increase

Airline passengers started paying higher Transportation Security Administration fees Monday. Some of the money will go into the Treasury’s general fund to help offset the federal deficit, the rest to TSA.

The old Sept. 11 security fee was $2.50 for a domestic nonstop flight or $5 for a flight with one or more connections, with a $5 limit on all oneway flights and $10 on round-trip flights arriving at the point of origin.

The new fee is $5.60 per one-way trip for both nonstop and connecting flights, but there is no longer a maximum, which could lead to steep increases for people with long layovers of more than four hours in the continental United States. Here’s an example: Under the old rules, if you flew from San Francisco nonstop to New York, the fee would be $2.50. If you flew from San Francisco to New York with a brief stop in Las Vegas, it would be $5. If you flew from San Francisco to New York with a brief stop in Las Vegas and an overnight layover in Chicago, it would still be $5 if the flight was all on one itinerary because of the $5 maximum on one-way flights.

Under the new rules, if you flew from San Francisco nonstop to New York, the fee would be $5.60. If you flew from San Francisco to New York with a brief stop in Las Vegas, it would also be $5.60, creating parity between nonstop and connecting flights. However, if you flew from San Francisco to New York with a brief stop in Las Vegas and an overnight stay in Chicago, the fee would be $11.20. The Chicago-to-New-York leg would count as a separate flight because the layover exceeded four hours, and would be charged as a separate fee.

The fee applies to any flight segment that originates in a U.S. airport, regardless of where the passenger started traveling.

For flights to Hawaii, Alaska or internationally, a separate fee won’t be charged until a layover exceeds 12 hours.