You pay Florida property taxes to your county tax collector, not to the state, and the bill is due in full by March 31. Collectors mail the bills out around November 1, and you can pay online by e-check or card, by mail, or in person at the tax collector's office. Pay early and you earn a discount that starts at 4 percent in November and shrinks a point each month until it disappears in March.
The bills tend to land right as the snowbirds start filling up Centre Street and the shrimp boats wind down their season. Most homeowners here never see the bill at all, because it rides inside an escrow account and gets paid by the mortgage company. That's convenient right up until the year it isn't.
How do I pay my property taxes in Florida?
Pay your county tax collector directly. Every Florida county has one, and each runs its own online portal where you can pay by e-check, which is usually free, or by debit or credit card, which adds a processing fee of around 2.5 percent. You can also mail a check or pay at the counter. If a mortgage company holds your taxes in escrow, it pays the collector on your behalf out of that account.
In Nassau County the tax collector runs this from offices on the island and over in Yulee, and the portal will find your account from a parcel number or an owner's name. An e-check moves the money for nothing; a card hands the processor a cut, so on a five-figure bill the e-check quietly saves you more than the discount does in some months.
If one winter lump sum is hard to plan around, Florida lets you split the bill into four quarterly payments. You have to file the application with your tax collector by April 30 to get on the plan for the next tax year, and missing that date costs you a full year before you can try again. The installment plan carries its own small discount for paying each quarter on time, so you give up only a little compared with paying all at once in November.
What month do you pay Florida property taxes?
Florida property taxes are due between November 1 and March 31, and they cover the year that just ended. Collectors mail the bills around November 1, the full amount is due by March 31, and anything still unpaid turns delinquent on April 1. So the bill for 2026 shows up in November 2026 and has to be cleared by the end of March 2027.
Miss that March 31 line and the taxes go delinquent on April 1, when unpaid real estate taxes in Florida can carry interest as high as 18 percent a year. The danger comes later: on or before June 1 the tax collector auctions a tax certificate against the unpaid amount, which is a lien an investor buys and you then have to redeem with interest added on. Leave a certificate sitting for two years and the holder can apply to force a tax deed sale, where the property itself goes to public auction. Almost nobody slides that far, but it is the reason April 1 matters more than a simple late fee would suggest.
How much do you save by paying early?
Florida rewards paying ahead with a discount that opens at 4 percent and falls one point a month. Settle the bill in November and you knock 4 percent off the total; wait until March and you pay the full face amount. On a $6,000 bill, that November discount is $240, which is real money for the simple act of paying early. The schedule is written into state law (Florida Statute 197.162), so it runs the same in all 67 counties.
| Pay by | Discount | What you'd pay on a $6,000 bill |
|---|---|---|
| November 30 | 4% | $5,760 |
| December 31 | 3% | $5,820 |
| January 31 | 2% | $5,880 |
| February 28 | 1% | $5,940 |
| March 31 | 0% | $6,000 |
If your taxes are escrowed, the servicer usually pays in November to capture that 4 percent for you, so the discount lands without you lifting a finger. Confirm it actually happens, though, because the savings belong to you, not the bank.
How do you look up your Florida property tax bill?
Look up a Florida property tax bill in two places. The county tax collector's site shows what you owe and lets you pay it; the county property appraiser's site shows the assessed value and the exemptions that produced that number. Both let you search by owner name, property address, or the parcel identification number printed on your deed. The records are public, so you can pull any property's history, not only your own.
It helps to know who does what. The property appraiser decides what your home is worth and which exemptions apply; the tax collector takes the money. So when a bill looks wrong, the number to question almost always traces back to the appraiser's value rather than the collector's arithmetic. Every August the appraiser mails a TRIM notice, the proposed-taxes letter, listing the assessed value, the exemptions on file, and the date of the hearing where rates get set. That August letter is the moment to catch a missing homestead exemption, months before the real bill arrives in November.
Do seniors over 65 pay property taxes in Florida?
Seniors over 65 in Florida do pay property taxes, but plenty of them pay less. Two breaks help. The first is an extra homestead exemption of up to $50,000 for owners 65 and older whose household income falls under a limit the state resets each year, a little under $37,000 for 2025. The second is for long-term residents: 65 or older, in the same home for at least 25 years, with a market value under $250,000.
That long-term break is the bigger one, because it can exempt the home entirely from a given taxing authority's share of the bill. Both are local-option exemptions, which means whether you get them, and how large they run, depends on whether your county and city actually voted them in. You file both with the property appraiser by March 1, and once you are approved you don't refile unless your income or your eligibility changes.
What exemptions lower a Florida property tax bill?
The biggest lever on any Florida property tax bill is the homestead exemption, and it does two jobs at once. It takes up to $50,000 off the assessed value of your primary residence, and it switches on Save Our Homes, a cap that limits how fast your assessed value can climb each year. You file once with the county property appraiser by March 1, and homestead renews on its own after that.
The $50,000 splits in two: the first $25,000 comes off every tax including schools, and a second $25,000 comes off value between $50,000 and $75,000 for everything but schools. Save Our Homes then holds the yearly rise in your assessed value to 3 percent or the change in inflation, whichever is lower. After a few years on the coast, where market values have run hard, that cap is often worth more than the exemption itself, and if you sell and buy again inside Florida you can carry the built-up savings to the next house through portability.
Veterans with a service-connected disability and homeowners with a total and permanent disability qualify for their own exemptions on top of homestead; ask the property appraiser about them in the same visit you file. A 10 percent service-connected disability is worth $5,000 off the assessed value, a total and permanent service-connected disability can exempt the home in full, and first responders left totally disabled in the line of duty have a full exemption of their own.
One last local wrinkle, mostly for anyone buying new construction out toward Wildlight or the Yulee side. The first bill after closing is often a strange one, because the property may still be assessed as vacant land for that year, with the finished house catching up the following November. The jump from a land-only bill to the first full bill can run a few thousand dollars, and it catches people who budgeted off their closing paperwork. When we walk a buyer through a place at Salt Harbor Real Estate, that first full year is the line we point to before anyone falls in love with the kitchen, because it is what moves the monthly payment once the escrow gets re-analyzed. Taxes here aren't the steepest in the state, but the coast adds its own math: file for homestead the week you close, and pay in November while the discount is still sitting at 4 percent.
Frequently asked questions
How do I pay my property taxes in Florida?
Pay your county tax collector, not the state, through their online portal (e-check is usually free; cards add about a 2.5 percent fee), by mail, or in person. If a mortgage company escrows your taxes, it pays the collector for you. You can also apply by April 30 to split the bill into four quarterly installments.
What month do you pay property taxes in Florida?
Bills are mailed around November 1 and are due in full by March 31 of the following year. Pay in November for the largest discount, which is 4 percent; anything still unpaid on April 1 is delinquent.
Do seniors over 65 pay property taxes in Florida?
Yes, but many pay less. Owners 65 and older with household income under a state limit (around $37,000 for 2025) can claim an extra exemption of up to $50,000 where their county or city has adopted it, and long-term residents of 25 years in a home worth under $250,000 may owe nothing to that taxing authority.
How do I look up my property taxes in Florida?
Search the county tax collector's website to see and pay what's owed, or the county property appraiser's website to see the assessed value and exemptions behind the bill. Both let you search by owner name, address, or parcel number, and the records are public.