04 Dec Are Senior Freeze, ANCHOR and Stay NJ going to be combined?

Q. Are Senior Freeze, ANCHOR and Stay NJ going to be combined?
— Taxed enough

A. This one is complicated, and while it’s set out in the law, the budget is what’s going to matter the most.

Stay NJ will need significant funding in the new budget, which won’t be passed until the summer.

But if all goes as planned, here’s how the benefits will work together.

Stay NJ, in conjunction with ANCHOR and Senior Freeze, is designed to cut property taxes by up to 50%, capped at $6,500, for residents 65 and older in New Jersey who earn less than $500,000 a year.

Basically, the state will consider first your ANCHOR and Senior Freeze benefits. If those add up to less than 50% of your property tax bill or $6,500 — whichever is greater — you’d get an extra check under the Stay NJ name to bring your total benefit up to that level.

There will be a combined application for all three benefits. The application must be available as of Feb. 1 with a deadline of Oct. 31 each year.

To be eligible for the programs, you would have to be a resident of the state as of Dec. 31 of the benefit year. For eligibility as a senior citizen, people would have to be age 65 by Dec. 31 of the benefit year.

The Legislature made one change to make sure people who have huge Senior Freeze benefits won’t lose any money here. Let’s say you have a Senior Freeze that’s higher than the 50% of your tax/$6,500 cap. You’d still get that higher benefit, but you wouldn’t get anything additional.

The changes to the program will also change the definition of “income” so it’s the same across all three programs. It would use a person’s gross income before any deductions or exclusions, including payments that are not taxable for some in New Jersey, including Social Security, pensions, annuities, other retirement income, interest income and distributions from Roth IRAs. There is a $500,000 total income cutoff for Stay NJ eligibility.

The first payments and application changes are set to start in 2026.

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This story was originally published in December 2024.

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