Mississippi Privilege Tax Exemption for Disabled Persons

Mississippi Veterans Affairs lists a privilege tax exemption on its state benefits page, and the state benefits guidebook has a section for it. It is worth reading the terms before spending any time on it. Under Miss. Code Ann. Section 27-15-227, a person who is 65 or older, blind, deaf, unable to speak, has lost a hand or foot or the use of a hand or foot, or can document being 50 percent disabled to perform physical labor, and whose annual gross income is $900 or less, is exempt from paying privilege tax for specified businesses. The income ceiling is the problem. Nine hundred dollars of annual gross income is below any plausible modern figure. A veteran receiving VA compensation at any rating, or Social Security, or a pension, exceeds it many times over in a single month. The provision has not been updated to a realistic threshold, and the practical effect is that a veteran who reads the first half of the eligibility list and stops will pursue something they cannot get. Note also what the exemption is. This is the privilege tax on conducting specified businesses, not an income tax, not a property tax, and not the motor vehicle road and bridge privilege tax that appears on a Mississippi tag bill. A veteran who sees the phrase "privilege tax exemption" in a benefits list and assumes it reduces the cost of registering a vehicle is reading the wrong tax. The vehicle privilege tax exemptions Mississippi does offer to veterans run through the specialty license plates, where a qualifying disabled veteran plate costs one dollar and Medal of Honor, Silver Star, and former prisoner of war plates are exempt from registration fees and privilege taxes. The disability test is also not a VA rating. Being "50 percent disabled to perform physical labor" is a functional test documented to the taxing authority, not a percentage from a rating decision, so a veteran holding a 50 percent VA rating has not thereby satisfied it. The reason to carry this entry at all is that it appears on the state's own list of veteran benefits, so a careful veteran will find it and ask. The answer is that the income ceiling almost certainly rules you out, and the time is better spent on the homestead exemption, the nursing home daily charge exemption, or the license plate.