The short answer
No fixed window. The lien can be extinguished until 30 days after the last party is served in the enforcement suit, and the holder cannot file that suit until 3 years after the tax lien certificate is recorded
How the clock works
Louisiana replaced redemption with extinguishment of the lien, and the shape is different from a redemption clock. There is no date on which the owner's right lapses by itself. Any person may pay the termination price to the tax collector at any time. The holder cannot even start the enforcement suit until the later of three years from recordation of the certificate or six months after the R.S. 47:2156 notices went out, and once suit is filed the right to pay survives until the close of business on the thirtieth day after the last party was served. After that the tax collector stops accepting payment, and the lien can be extinguished only by the holder's own act or by court order: a party holding an interest may still file a contradictory motion before the judicial sale and ask the court to set the termination price, which the court fixes within 30 days and which must then be paid within 30 days more. The pressure on the holder comes from the other end. R.S. 47:2155(C) makes the right to sue peremptive at seven years from recordation, suspended while a political subdivision holds the certificate or a recorded bankruptcy stay is pending, after which the lien is extinguished and the inscription cancelled. Redemption periods that the constitution used to provide remain peremptive under R.S. 47:2241, but the amended constitution no longer provides any.
Who can redeem
Any person may cause a tax lien to be extinguished. Louisiana does not restrict the right to the owner or to parties of record. Paying does not make the payer a creditor in the tax debtor's succession, business reorganization, liquidation or receivership, except so far as needed for the termination price to count as a debt of a bankruptcy estate. Before the auction opens, an owner or co-owner may simply pay the taxes, interest and costs, and a certificate bought at auction by an owner or by another person holding an interest in the property is treated as payment of the debt rather than as a lien.
What the owner pays to redeem
The termination price under R.S. 47:2243(B) is the face value of the tax lien certificate, plus the 5 percent penalty assessed under R.S. 47:2127, plus interest on the face value at the monthly rate the certificate carries, plus the cost of preparing and recording the termination certificate, plus the certificate holder's post-auction notice costs on an affidavit filed with the tax collector, capped at 500 dollars, plus anything owed to the holder under R.S. 47:2160.1 for subsequent parish or municipal impositions with their own penalty and interest. R.S. 47:2244 adds the political subdivision's actual costs of preparing the certificate, giving notice of the auction and any post-auction notice, and recording, capped at 300 dollars exclusive of filing and recording fees. Where the tax collector cannot deliver a full payoff, partial payment need not be accepted, and where several certificates encumber one parcel a payment short of clearing them all is applied as the payer directs, or otherwise to the oldest lien. The tax collector remits the termination price to the certificate holder within 30 days and issues a termination certificate that the recorder uses to cancel the inscription.
How your interest accrues
Interest runs on the face value of the tax lien certificate at the monthly rate set by the winning bid, on a noncompounding basis, from issuance of the certificate. Face value is the delinquent statutory impositions plus the interest and costs that had accrued before the certificate issued, plus the clerk of court recording cost, and it deliberately excludes the 5 percent penalty. Because the auction price is fixed at face value there is no premium anywhere in the transaction, so the rate applies to every dollar the investor paid. The 1 percent per month ceiling is 12 percent a year and the seven tenths of one percent floor is 8.4 percent a year. Subsequent taxes are treated differently and better: under R.S. 47:2160.1(B)(2) a holder who pays a later year of statutory impositions adds them to the debt with their own 5 percent penalty and interest at the full 1 percent per month, whatever rate was bid on the original certificate.
How far the rate can be bid down
No Louisiana certificate can be bid to zero. R.S. 47:2154(C) fixes the auction price at the face value of the tax lien certificate, and (D)(1) makes the monthly interest rate the only subject of the bidding. Bidding opens at the statutory ceiling of 1 percent per month and falls in increments of one tenth of one percent, which is 12 percent a year falling in 1.2 percent steps, and (D)(2)(b) refuses any bid that would take the rate below seven tenths of one percent per month. The worst rate a winning bidder can accept is therefore 8.4 percent a year. Where several bidders reach the same lowest rate, the first bid submitted wins, so at a competitive parcel the contest is decided on speed rather than on price. A lien nobody bids on is not passed over: the tax collector records the certificate in favor of the political subdivision, and that certificate earns the full 1 percent per month.
What happens when it ends
Louisiana holds no tax deed sale. A certificate holder who has not been paid files an ordinary proceeding under R.S. 47:2266.1 asking the court to recognize the delinquent obligation and the lien, and can do so only after the later of three years from recordation of the tax lien certificate or six months after sending the post-auction notices required by R.S. 47:2156. Those notices cannot go out more than one year before the suit, which makes years three through four the natural filing window. The petition names every owner shown in the conveyance records, and a notice of pendency of action goes into the mortgage records to preserve the lien while the case runs. Judgment is in rem only. It is executed by writ of fieri facias under Code of Civil Procedure Article 2291 and following, and the property is sold at a sheriff's judicial sale.
A redeemed certificate, plus your accrued interest, is what makes the wait profitable; see how redemption periods work across states. An unredeemed certificate is instead your path to the property through a tax deed sale, which still does not convey marketable title on its own, so budget for a quiet title action.
Verified Aug 24, 2026 against Louisiana statutes.
Tax Sale Atlas publishes educational information about public tax sale processes. This is not legal, financial, or investment advice. Rules, dates, and fees change; confirm with the county office before you bid.