Chester Veterans’ Property Tax Exemptions

The assessor’s Veterans & Elderly/Disabled Tax Relief Programs page requires, for the regular veteran’s exemption, wartime service of at least 90 days with an honorable discharge or qualifying other-than-honorable discharge, the original DD-214 on file with the Town Clerk prior to the assessment date; disabled veterans also file the VA rating slip. Its additional exemption follows the state’s income-based program: “For the 2026 Grand List year the maximum income level for a single/unmarried Veteran is $46,300. The maximum income level for married Veteran is $56,500,” applied for biennially between February 1 and October 1. For a permanently and totally disabled veteran the page requires the D-2 application, an attestation that no claim is pending in another town, and proof of the 100 percent service-connected permanent and total rating, filed annually by January 1. The town’s ordinance book, posted by the Town Clerk as a 167-page compilation, carries ordinances enacted at a Special Town Meeting of October 15, 1985 and published in the Middletown Press October 21, 1985. One gives “any veteran entitled to an exemption … in accordance with subdivision (19) of section 12-81 … an additional exemption applicable to the assessed value of property up to the amount of one thousand dollars, provided … adjusted gross income … not more than fourteen thousand dollars if such veteran are married or not more than twelve thousand dollars if such veteran is not married,” with a parallel paragraph for a surviving spouse entitled under subdivision (22) at not more than twelve thousand dollars, and another allows “an exemption from property tax to be determined as a uniform percentage of the assessed value of any one motor vehicle owned by any veteran with a condition of disability” qualifying under subdivision (20) or (21), where the vehicle is specially equipped. The ordinance’s income limits are those of its day; 12-81f now requires a limit not lower than the 12-81l amount OPM sets each year, and the assessor’s page prints the current $46,300 and $56,500 for the additional exemption. OLR’s 2023 survey recorded Chester as offering no municipal option at all. Ask the assessor how the 1985 ordinance is administered today.