Massachusetts Free Vehicle Registration and Driver’s License

This is a small benefit stated in one sentence, and the sentence was rewritten in 2024 in a way that matters. Paragraph (29) of G.L. c. 90, s. 33, as replaced by section 40 of the HERO Act, provides that no fee shall be exacted for the registration of any vehicle owned by a veteran who has been determined by VA to have a combined service-connected disability rating of 100 per cent, or to be individually unemployable due to their service-connected disability, and no fee shall be exacted for the issuance to such disabled veteran of a licence to operate such vehicle. Three things are worth pulling out. Unemployability is named. As in the motor vehicle excise statute, the HERO Act wrote a total disability rating based on individual unemployability into the operative words rather than leaving it to inference. A veteran with a combined schedular rating of seventy per cent who is paid at the total rate is inside this paragraph on its face. It is not limited to one vehicle. The paragraph says "any vehicle owned by a veteran" who meets the test. The excise exemption in chapter 60A is expressly limited to one vehicle and this one is not, so a qualifying veteran registering two cars pays no registration fee on either while paying excise on one of them. Whether the Registry administers it that way is a separate question, and this catalog records what the statute says. The licence is covered too. The second half of the paragraph waives the fee for the issuance of a licence to operate the vehicle to such disabled veteran. Massachusetts charges for a driver's licence and for each renewal, so this is a recurring saving rather than a one-off. What is not covered. The registration fee is not the excise, and it is not the annual safety inspection fee, and it is not the sales tax on a purchase. A qualifying veteran should claim this paragraph at the Registry and the chapter 60A exemption with the local assessors, because they are different taxes collected by different authorities on different forms. A related paragraph in G.L. c. 90, s. 2 lets the Registry furnish, for a vehicle owned or leased by and used by a veteran with specified losses of a foot or hand or with the defined blindness, plates displaying the International Symbol of Access and the words "Disabled Veteran". That plate is a disability parking credential as well as an identification, and it turns on the specified losses rather than on a percentage. A veteran at one hundred per cent for a condition that is not one of those losses gets the fee waiver under section 33(29) and not that plate.