Hawaii Real Property Tax Exemption for Totally Disabled Veterans

Hawaii Revised Statutes section 246-29 covers homes of totally disabled veterans. The home owned and occupied as a residence by a veteran who is totally disabled from injuries sustained on active duty is exempt from real property taxes, except for the minimum tax. Two things about this benefit are unlike the property tax exemptions elsewhere in this catalog. The first is that the exemption is near-total rather than a dollar reduction. There is no assessed value ceiling and no income test. What remains is the county minimum tax, a flat charge that each county sets and that typically runs in the low hundreds of dollars a year. A veteran expecting a zero bill will get a small one. The second is that Hawaii has no state or municipal property tax at all. All real property tax is levied and administered by the four counties: the City and County of Honolulu, the County of Hawaii, the County of Maui, and the County of Kauai. The state statute sets the framework, and each county runs its own forms, deadlines, and minimum tax amount. Two veterans with identical circumstances on different islands can face different paperwork and pay different minimums, and both are correct. Census records list a fifth county, Kalawao, on Molokai. It is the former Kalaupapa settlement, has a population in the dozens, and is administered by the state Department of Health rather than as an ordinary county, so it levies no real property tax of its own. For this exemption the four taxing counties are the ones that matter. In Honolulu the claim goes on form E-8-10.5, with a physician's certificate of disability; the City and County of Honolulu entry sets out its deadline, which the City's own pages state three different ways, and its $300 minimum tax. Other counties use their own forms. Maui and Kauai also publish separate disability exemptions for veterans below the total threshold, which the state statute does not require, so a veteran who does not meet the totally disabled test should still ask their own county what it offers. The exemption continues as long as the veteran remains totally disabled, and it passes to an unremarried widow or widower. Apply to the county real property assessment division for the island where the home is, not to the state.