Dave Ellison Jr. has managed to hold on to his money by claiming a homestead exemption on his manufactured home. Since moving into his Mount Alban home he has added a front porch and two extra rooms on the back. (The Vicksburg Post/PAT SHANNAHAN)

[02/15/01] Some owners of manufactured homes aren’t applying for the tax breaks they’re due, Warren County Tax Assessor Richard Holland said.

Dave Ellison Jr. and his wife are local people who have and are saving about $300 a year.

The Ellisons’ home is on land they own at Mount Alban and Ellison roads. He has the property listed on the Warren County tax rolls as real property and files for homestead exemption, something not every owner of manufactured housing does. That and the fact he’s older than 65 save the couple more than $300 a year in taxes.

“It’s just fair to get some consideration” just like the owners of a conventional home, Ellison said, adding that being able to get homestead exemption is a big financial help.

In Mississippi, people who own the home in which they live are eligible for the homestead break in property taxes. Depending on the value of the land and what tax collectors and assessors call improvements, the homeowner can save hundreds of dollars.

Manufactured homes, often still called trailers or mobile homes, have always been legal hybrids in the world of taxation. They’re not vehicles and they’re not fixed structures.

Mississippi allows two ways for the owners of manufactured houses to pay property taxes, Holland said.

“The first is as personal property,” he said.

When a manufactured home is taxed as personal property, tax collectors and assessors use a book published by the Mississippi Tax Commission that assigns an assessed value on a manufactured home based on its size and age.

“The second way is as real property,” he said.

Holland explained that for a one-time $12 fee, a person can declare a manufactured home to be real property, just like a conventional house.

If that is all the manufactured home owner does, he still gets some break because once the home is declared real property, the assessment rate drops from 30 percent of real value to 15 percent.

Where the owner of a manufactured home can really get a tax break, Holland said, is when a person has title to the land on which the manufactured home sits and that home is the owner’s principal place of residence.

In that case, he can sign up for homestead exemption.

Holland picked as an example the owner of a manufactured home and land that has a true value of $32,260 and an assessed value of $3,226. Property taxes would be $441.27 this year without homestead exemption. With homestead, the owner of the home and land would owe $213.27.

Holland said the taxes would be $375.58 if the mobile home had been taxed as personal property.

“Every year we get 20 to 25 people come to my office who don’t know about this,” Holland said.

Based on that he estimated there are probably at least a couple of hundred manufactured home owners who could qualify for homestead exemption.

Right now is the time of year when people can apply for homestead exemption, Holland said. The signup period is from Jan. 1 to April 1 for taxes due next January.