Grand Forks County: Disabled Veteran Property Tax Credit intake

The credit is the State's, under Section 57-02-08.8, as the North Dakota entry explains: the disability percentage applied against the first nine thousand dollars of taxable valuation of the homestead - the Tax Commissioner's table runs from $4,500 of taxable value at a 50 percent rating to the full $9,000 at 100 percent, and taxable value is about 4.5 percent of what the house is worth. In Grand Forks County the application is taken by the Tax Equalization Office, 151 South 4th Street, mailing P.O. Box 5294, Grand Forks ND 58206-5294, phone (701) 780-8259 - the county's archived page names Whitney Walsh as director of tax equalization and the state association's directory names Whitney Sivertson, so confirm the current director when calling. The statutory filing point is the county auditor; the county's finance and tax director, Colleen Morstad, holds that office at P.O. Box 5726, (701) 780-8201. What to file. The Tax Commissioner's guideline: "A disabled veteran or surviving spouse claiming a credit for the first time shall file with the county auditor an affidavit showing the required facts, a description of the property, a copy of the DD Form 214 showing the veteran's honorable discharge from active military service and a certificate from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs certifying to the amount of the disability. Those documents are confidential under N.D.C.C. Section 37-18-11." Deadline. The current SFN 24770 says the application "must be filed with the county auditor by April 1 of the first year for which the credit is claimed", and the Tax Commissioner's page says April 1 of the year the property is assessed. The county's own Tax Equalization page carries no veteran-credit instructions, so the state form and page govern. A surviving spouse receiving VA dependency and indemnity compensation receives the full 100 percent credit, and a veteran who never applied for earlier years can ask the commission, under Section 57-02-08.8(7), to cancel the unpaid taxes representing the credit for those years.