North Dakota Motor Vehicle Excise and Registration Exemption

Two statutes work together. Subdivision (j) of section 39-04-18(2) exempts from registration the motor vehicles not exceeding 26,000 pounds registered gross weight owned and operated by a qualifying disabled veteran, and section 57-40.3-04(1) exempts the same veteran's vehicle from the motor vehicle excise tax. Between them, buying and keeping a car costs a qualifying veteran nothing in state vehicle tax or registration. Three routes qualify. A disabled veteran under Public Law 79-663, which is the federal automobile and adaptive equipment grant at 38 U.S.C. 3901. A veteran with a one hundred percent service-connected disability. Or a veteran with an extra-schedular rating to include individual unemployability which results in being paid at the one hundred percent rate. The unemployability route is in the operative text of both sections, put there for the excise exemption and the registration exemption alike by House Bill 1180 of the 2025 session. The registration exemption covers no more than two vehicles owned by the disabled veteran at any one time. The excise exemption is written per vehicle acquired or leased and in the veteran's possession. The provision worth knowing about, and the reason this entry exists separately from the plates entry, is the choice the statute gives. Subdivision (j) says the qualifying veteran is entitled to display "either a distinctive license plate or a standard plate that does not identify the veteran as a veteran or disabled veteran which is issued by the department at no cost", or any other distinctive or vanity plate they buy. A disabled veteran can take the full fee exemption without advertising their disability on the back of the car. Very few states in this catalog offer that, and the ones that do rarely say so in the statute. That choice does not cost the excise exemption. Section 57-40.3-04(1) conditions the exemption on a veteran who "registers, or is eligible to register" the vehicle with a distinctive plate under 39-04-18(2)(j). A veteran who remains eligible for the distinctive plate but chooses the plain one still satisfies the second limb. For a surviving spouse. A surviving spouse receiving Dependency and Indemnity Compensation is eligible for the registration exemption on one vehicle and for the excise exemption. Both sections carry the same retroactivity clause as the property tax credit: where the disability or service-connected death determination comes after the veteran's death under a law that makes the spouse eligible for DIC, the determination is presumed to precede the death, and VA correspondence showing the spouse is a survivor in receipt of DIC is sufficient proof. A separate and much narrower provision helps a member coming home from a long tour. Section 39-04-18(1)(e) lets a North Dakota resident who served in the armed forces for more than one year relicense a vehicle without paying a fee or penalty for the intervening unlicensed years, on an affidavit that the vehicle was not in use.