Who Counts as a Veteran in Iowa

Read this entry before any other Iowa entry. In this state the question is never "am I a veteran" but "am I a veteran for this section", and the answer changes from benefit to benefit. Section 35.1, subsection 2 is the master definition and it applies to chapters 35, 35A, 35B, 35C and 35D. It has four paragraphs and they work as alternatives. Paragraph "a" is the wartime route: a resident of this state who served during one of thirteen listed periods and was discharged under honorable conditions. The list runs from World War I through "Persian Gulf Conflict from August 2, 1990, through the date the president or the Congress of the United States declares a cessation of hostilities". No such declaration has been made, so the last period is still open. Anyone who served on or after August 2, 1990 is inside a wartime period for Iowa purposes. This matters: unlike states whose wartime list simply stops at a date in the 1990s, Iowa's last window has no closing edge. Paragraph "b" is seven separate routes that do not require a wartime period: twenty years in the reserve forces; twenty years in the Iowa national guard; a reserve or guard member activated for federal duty other than training for a minimum aggregate of ninety days; active oceangoing merchant marines who served between December 7, 1941 and December 31, 1946; the women's air force service pilots and others conferred veteran status under Pub. L. No. 95-202 and 38 U.S.C. section 106; a person whose enlistment would have fallen in the Korean Conflict who instead served five years in the reserves; and, in subparagraphs (6) and (7), members who have served twenty years and are still serving. That last pair is unusual. In Iowa a currently serving reservist or guard member with twenty years in is a veteran by statute, and section 35.2 tells them how to prove it: submit the retirement points accounting statement issued by the armed forces, the state adjutant general, or the adjutant general of any other state. Paragraph "c" is the plain peacetime route: a resident who served on federal active duty other than training and was discharged under honorable conditions. Paragraph "d" reaches a resident who served in any component and is in receipt of service-connected disability from VA, discharged under honorable conditions. No duration and no wartime period. Now the divergences, which are the point of this entry. Public employment drops the residency requirement. Section 35C.1 and section 400.10 both say "veteran" means as defined in section 35.1 "except that the requirement that the person be a resident of this state shall not apply". A veteran who has never lived in Iowa can claim the Iowa public employment preference. The property tax exemption is narrower in one way and wider in another. Section 426A.11, subsection 2 reaches only a veteran as defined in section 35.1, subsection 2, paragraph "a" or "b". Paragraphs "c" and "d" are left out. Subsection 4 then adds the chapter's own route: "a resident of this state who is a former member of the armed forces of the United States and who served for a minimum aggregate of eighteen months and who was discharged under honorable conditions", or fewer than eighteen months if the honorable discharge was because of a service-related injury. So a veteran with twelve peacetime months and no injury is a veteran under section 35.1, paragraph "c" and is not one for chapter 426A. Because paragraph "a" subparagraph (13) is still open, almost anyone who served after August 2, 1990 gets in on the wartime route anyway, which is why this gap is easy to miss and still real for the 1975-to-1990 cohort. Chapter 426A also defines the discharge standard, and that definition is not in the statute. The Department of Revenue's instructions for form 54-146 state that for chapter 426A purposes "under honorable conditions" means the character of discharge was "honorable" or "general (under honorable conditions)" and "does not include any other character of discharge including but not limited to: (1) Under other than honorable conditions; (2) Dishonorable; (3) Bad conduct; (4) Uncharacterized; or (5) A similar expression". Uncharacterized is named. That is worth comparing to New Hampshire, whose single statutory definition at RSA 21:50 expressly includes an uncharacterized discharge based on a service-connected injury. The same document, in the two states, produces opposite answers. The widest discharge test in Iowa law is in the small business lending program. Section 12.34, subsection 1, paragraph "b", subparagraph (3): "'Veteran' means a person who served on federal active duty, other than training, in the armed forces of the United States and who was released or discharged under any circumstances other than dishonorable conditions, or who meets the definition of 'veteran' in section 35.1." A general discharge, an other-than-honorable discharge and an uncharacterized discharge all get through that door. No other Iowa provision does this. The license plate is wider than section 35.1 too. Section 321.34, subsection 27 requires only that the owner "served in the armed forces of the United States and was discharged under honorable conditions". No residency at the time of service, no wartime period, no minimum duration. Four programs define disability four ways. Section 483A.24, subsections 16 and 17 define "disabled" as "entitled to a service connected rating under 38 U.S.C. ch. 11", which a nought percent rating satisfies. Section 483A.24, subsection 5 sets the nonresident hunt threshold at a service-connected rating "with a degree of disability of thirty percent or more". Section 483A.8D, enacted in 2025, says only "was disabled during the veteran's military service, as verified by the department of veterans affairs", with no rating at all. And the disabled veteran property tax credit requires a permanent one hundred percent rating, or a permanent and total rating based on individual unemployability, with individual unemployability then defined by Iowa statute in terms narrower than VA's own. Two more definitions live in their own chapters. Section 37A.1 defines veteran, for the commemorative property chapter, as a deceased person who served during a war or served full-time in an organized state militia. Section 35A.14, subsection 1 defines it for the injured veterans grant as post-September 11, 2001 service, and it is the only Iowa provision that reaches a nonresident: a member of an Iowa national guard unit who was injured while in that unit and lives elsewhere. What to do with this. When a benefit is refused, ask which section the refusal rests on and read that section's own definition rather than the general one. Iowa's county veterans service officers work with these distinctions daily and their help is free by statute under section 35B.6, subsection 1, paragraph "e".