Kansas Property Tax Freeze for Disabled Veterans

Kansas does not exempt a disabled veteran's home from property tax. What 79-4508a does instead is refund the difference between the tax bill for the year claimed and the tax bill for the veteran's base year. In effect the bill is frozen at the level it stood when the veteran first qualified, and the state sends back the growth. The base year is the year in which the individual becomes an eligible claimant. For anyone who would otherwise have been eligible before 2021, the base year is deemed to be 2021, so the freeze cannot reach back further than that however long the veteran has owned the house. Three tests have to be met and they are tested at different moments, which is the part most easily got wrong. The claimant must be a disabled veteran, or a person sixty-five or older. Household income for the year in which the claim is filed must be at or under the limit, which the statute sets at $50,000 and then indexes: for tax years after 2022 the threshold rises by the federal cost-of-living adjustment under section 1(f)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, which is why the figure in circulation for the current year is higher than the $50,000 printed in the statute. And the appraised value of the homestead for the base year must be $350,000 or less. That last one is a base-year test, not a current-year test, so a house that has since appreciated past $350,000 does not lose the freeze. "Disabled veteran" is defined in 79-4502(i) and the threshold is 50 percent. The veteran must be a Kansas resident, must have served in the active military, naval, air or space service including the groups and individuals listed under 38 C.F.R. 3.7, must have been discharged or released under an honorable discharge or a general discharge under honorable conditions, must have a disability incurred or aggravated in the line of duty, and must have a service-connected evaluation of 50 percent or more under 38 U.S.C. 1101 et seq. or 10 U.S.C. 1201 et seq. A general discharge qualifies here, which is not true of the Kansas sales tax exemption. What counts as household income changed recently and the change is easy to miss. For tax year 2025 and thereafter, 79-4508a(b)(3) defines household income as the total Kansas adjusted gross income of all persons of the household. Before that the claim used the older and much broader definition in 79-4502(a), which swept in half of social security, all dividends and interest whether or not in adjusted gross income, workers compensation and the gross amount of any pension. Moving to Kansas AGI is a substantial loosening for a household living on retirement income. Veterans disability compensation does not count as income under either definition. Section 79-4502(a) says so in terms, and it says the same of disability payments under the federal social security act. A surviving spouse of a disabled veteran who was receiving this refund at the time of the claimant's death continues to receive it until the surviving spouse remarries. The claim goes on form K-40SVR to the Kansas Department of Revenue, not to the county. This is an income tax filing, which means the veteran pays the county the full bill first and gets money back from the state afterward, and it means a veteran who files nothing because they owe no income tax still has to file to claim it. One exclusion runs the other way from most: 79-4509(b) provides that the $700 ceiling on the ordinary homestead refund does not apply to a claim under this section. There is no cap on this refund at all.