State aid with property taxes, which averaged about $163 per receiving household last year, is available for homeowners with lower incomes in New Hampshire via an assistance program. Homeowners have to qualify, and apply, by the end of June.
New Hampshire’s Low and Moderate Income Homeowners Property Tax Relief Program (LMIHPTRP) provides assistance for individual homeowners who earn less than $37,000 annually, as well as to married couples or head of households who earn less than $47,000. These thresholds were raised in 2021 after two decades without adjustments since the program’s inception in 2001. However, these updated thresholds are also not adjusted for inflation automatically, and have not been increased since the 2021 revisions.
About 92,000 households had incomes below $35,000 in 2024, including 42,000 that owned their homes and paid property taxes on those homes, rather than in costs passed through to their rental payments.
This aid program assists Granite State homeowners with low and moderate incomes, who typically pay more in state and local property taxes as a share of their incomes relative to households with higher incomes. Applications are open until June 30, 2026 and can be submitted to the New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration.
Recent Expansion Stabilizes Declines in Aid and Participation
From 2003 to 2020, participation in the LMIHPTRP declined sharply. In 2003, the first year of implementation, the LMIHPTRP provided $7.5 million in assistance across 27,208 granted claims. Distributed aid dropped to $4.9 million for 25,059 claims the following year, and fell to $2.0 million for 10,222 claims by 2013. Participation had declined by about half again by 2019, when approximately $900,000 was distributed to 5,818 households.
The 2021 revisions to eligibility, which allowed the program to reach more households and altered the potential amounts households could receive, appears to have temporarily halted this slide in enrollment. Enrollment in 2022 had risen to 5,943, a 6.7% increase from the 2020 low of 5,572 granted claims.
The average size of claims also increased, rising sharply to nearly $241 in 2021 but falling back to about $164 per claim in the 2022-2024 data, which was only slightly higher than the approximately $160 average of the 2017-2019 period. Average claims granted had been falling since their peak in 2011. The 2021 expansion of the program may have helped to halt, or at least slow, the decline in both uptake and the amount of dollars provided.
However, the latest data suggests that the halt in this multi-decade decline in participation may have been temporary. Thus far in the 2024 claims data, with some data potentially still pending, relief granted across 4,901 claims totaled about $800,000; if those figures hold, that number of claims would be the lowest since the LMIHPTRP began operating in 2003.
Underutilization Persists
Many homeowners likely eligible for aid have not accessed it, and many other households with low incomes are ineligible for this assistance.
Based on the most recent data available, slightly less than a quarter of New Hampshire households, or about 136,000 households, had less than $50,000 in income during 2024, including 16%, or about 92,000, with incomes below $35,000 in that year.
A lack of knowledge about the program may be a barrier for many homeowners to access it. The State requires that property taxpayers receive a notice that they may be eligible for assistance if they are blind, older adults, have a disability, a Veteran or married to a Veteran, or “unable to pay taxes due to poverty or other good cause.” However, this notice does not list the incomes for eligibility for assistance, which are higher than the Federal Poverty Guideline levelsfor most households, depending on the number of people in the household.
The Legislature has considered proposals, including last year, to expand the amount of assistance available through the LMIHPTRP as well as promote awareness of the program.
While some homeowners with low and moderate incomes have benefitted from the program in its current form, renters, who have substantially lower median incomes, are not eligible for relief. Joint tenants who own a property together may be eligible depending on the percentage of ownership of a property as a share of the homestead, but only one claim may be filed for a household.
As of 2024, the median household income for renters was about $59,000 while homeowner median income was approximately $119,000. Renters are more likely to be cost-burdened by housing expenses than homeowners in New Hampshire. About 50,000 renter households in New Hampshire had incomes below $35,000 in 2024, and 68,000 had incomes below $50,000.
Property Taxes Require a Greater Share of Income for Those with the Least
The LMIHPTRP is designed to provide relief relative to the Statewide Education Property Tax, and is not structured to be a local property tax rebate or refund, although this State tax is collected by local governments.
The relief provided is relatively limited compared to the amount of total property tax that is paid by homeowners. For a married couple with a total adjusted gross income of $34,000 and a home assessed at $350,000 in 2025, the total refund provided would be $147.84, assuming that the State’s estimated equalization ratio does not impact the home value or the Statewide Education Property Tax rate.
According to the State’s tax credit application form for the LMIHPTRP, the amount of relief is calculated by dividing the capped eligible assessed home value of $220,000 by 1,000, and then multiplying that figure by the Statewide Education Property Tax rate, which averaged $1.12 per $1,000 of property value statewide in 2025. That total, $246.40, is adjusted by a sliding scale of the subsidy amount based on household income (0.60 for a married couple with at least $29,400 and less than $35,300 in annual income, based on federal tax calculations). Households with lower incomes receive higher refunds; a married couple with a total adjusted gross income under $29,400 would receive a full refund of $246.40 in this scenario.
Increasing property values statewide, which can effectively lower the Statewide Education Property Tax rate, can function as a reduction to this credit. As the median single-family house sale price in New Hampshire has increased 78% since 2019, the taxable assessed value under the Statewide Education Property Tax has increased 77.7% between April 2019 and April 2024, resulting in the State’s average tax rate dropping from $1.825 per $1,000 to $1.030 per $1,000; this decline effectively lowers the amount of relief provided through this program for households, even as total local property tax bills statewide have increased faster than inflation in all but three years since 2009. In fiscal year 2022, the total amount of property taxes paid in New Hampshire averaged $3,388 per person, including for each individual within households.
While relief amounts are low in comparison to the amount paid in property tax, the LMIHPTRP helps offset costs for homeowners with low and moderate incomes who typically pay a greater percentage of their income in property taxes relative to homeowners with higher incomes. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Granite Staters under 65 years old with incomes between $62,300 and $153,900 paid about 5.0% of their income in state and local property taxes in 2023. This percentage was higher among those with incomes below $35,000, who paid approximately 5.9%. The highest one percent of households by income, with more than $721,000 annually, paid about 2.0% of their incomes in property taxes.
Property Tax Assistance in New Hampshire and Elsewhere
Aside from the LMIHPTRP, credits, exemptions, and rebates are permitted by New Hampshire law and can help local property taxpayers in certain instances. Generally, local governments have the choice of either adopting or expanding these credits for their residents. Credits are typically limited to the characteristics of a taxpayer, such as visual impairment, disability, age, or prior military service, or on the characteristics of a building, such as fuel or energy types, land use, or building ownership.
States can employ a variety of methods to provide targeted relief for property taxes, particularly to households with low incomes. Some states will provide homestead exemptions or deductions to primary homeowners to reduce the amount of their property that is taxable, and some governments put percentage limits on the growth in assessed values.
In 2023, 29 states, including New Hampshire through the LMIHPTRP, offered assistance designed to limit property taxes based on a homeowner’s income; these programs are often called “circuit breakers” and target aid to the households with the least ability to pay. Most other states offered some other type of income-based aid, although they did not have some of the mechanisms of circuit breakers. Some of these programs limit total property taxes paid to a certain percentage of a household’s income, incorporating total income caps to better target assistance at households with low and moderate incomes. In 2023, 21 states extended some form of assistance to renters as well, who may be paying property taxes through their rents.
While New Hampshire’s program is more limited than some deployed by other states, the State government has invited eligible homeowners to apply for relief by June 30, 2026. Applications can be submitted online through the State’s Granite Tax Connect portal, as well as via mail by submitting a paper form. Applicants can view the program’s website to find answers to frequently asked questions and check online claim statuses. Residents can contact the New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration with any additional questions.
Phil Sletten is research director at NH Fiscal Policy Institute, a nonpartisan, independent research nonprofit that examines issues related to the state budget, the economy, policy decisions, and the financial security of Granite Staters. For more information, visit nhfpi.org.