Nebraska Disabled Veteran Homestead Exemption

Nebraska calls this a homestead exemption, and for most claimants it is a partial one. For a qualifying disabled veteran it is not. Section 77-3506(1) exempts one hundred percent of the exempt amount, and section 77-3501.01(3) defines the exempt amount, for purposes of 77-3506, as the taxable value of the homestead. The whole of it. Three things follow, and together they make this the largest state property tax benefit in this catalog after Wisconsin's. There is no ceiling on the value of the house. Section 77-3506.03 reduces the exemption by ten percent for each $2,500 by which a homestead exceeds the county maximum value, and cuts it off entirely at $20,000 over, but subsection (3) of that section says it does not apply to any exemption under 77-3506. A veteran in a house worth four times the county average keeps the entire exemption. There is no income limit. The sliding income scale that the Department of Revenue publishes every year, and that governs Nebraska's other homestead categories, lives in 77-3507 and 77-3508. It does not reach 77-3506. A working veteran on a full salary is treated the same as one with no income at all. And the counties do not pay for it. Section 77-3523 requires the county treasurer and assessor to certify the lost revenue to the Tax Commissioner each November 30 and requires the state to reimburse every taxing agency in the county in six monthly payments beginning in January. This matters more than it sounds. Where a state orders a veterans exemption and leaves the locality to absorb it, administration tightens and the exemption comes under pressure in bad budget years. Nebraska pays its own bill. The rating gate has two routes and section 77-3506(2)(a) states both. The veteran must have been discharged or otherwise separated with a characterization of honorable or general under honorable conditions, and must be drawing compensation from VA because of either a one hundred percent service-connected permanent disability, or the assignment of a total disability rating for compensation pursuant to 38 C.F.R. 4.16. That second route is individual unemployability, named by its federal regulation rather than described. The effect is the same as Wisconsin's, reached by the opposite drafting technique: a county assessor reading 77-3506 has no percentage to compare against and no room to treat unemployability as something short of total. The Department of Revenue's own guide states it plainly, listing veterans with less than a 100 percent rating who hold a 100 percent individual unemployability rating inside the same category. Note what the statute asks for and what it does not. It asks that the veteran be drawing compensation, so a rating held without compensation does not carry the exemption. It does not ask for wartime service, and the periods in 80-401.01 that govern Nebraska's other veteran homestead category are irrelevant here. It does not ask for any minimum residency in Nebraska beyond owning and occupying the homestead. The homestead itself is defined by 77-3502: a residence or mobile home and up to one acre of surrounding land, in Nebraska, actually occupied by the owner of record from January 1 through August 15 of the year. A life tenant, a joint tenant, a tenant in common, a purchaser in possession under a land contract and a beneficiary of a trust holding the property can all be the owner for this purpose. The August 15 date is the one that catches people: a veteran who sells and moves in July has not held the homestead long enough for that year, though 77-3509.01 provides a transfer to a new homestead. There is one exclusion inside the eligibility clause. The veteran must not be eligible for total exemption under sections 77-3526 to 77-3528, which is the separate exemption for a paraplegic veteran or multiple amputee in a home substantially contributed to by VA. That exemption is better, and this catalog carries it separately. Filing is with the county assessor, on Form 458, after February 1 and on or before June 30. The effective date of the rating must be on or before January 1 of the application year. Then the part that every published guide currently gets wrong. Until 2026 a category 4V veteran had to reapply and recertify in each year evenly divisible by five. Section 21 of LB803, approved April 16, 2026 and operative July 18, 2026, rewrote 77-3506(3) to read that application "shall not be required in any subsequent year" for the veteran route and for three of the four surviving spouse routes, and 77-3512(1)(e) now says the same thing. Only the temporary total rating route in 77-3506(2)(c) remains annual. The Department of Revenue's Homestead Exemption Information Guide, revised February 19, 2026, predates that act and still describes the five-year cycle. A veteran should file once and then check with the county assessor rather than assume either rule. Four late filing routes survive a missed June 30. The county board may extend the deadline to July 20 by majority vote, but not for an applicant who received an extension the year before. A medical condition that prevented timely filing supports a late application on Form 458L. A surviving spouse may file late with the death certificate of a spouse who died during the year for which the exemption is requested. And 77-3512(1)(d) allows a late application where the VA certification itself arrived after June 30, which is the route for a veteran whose rating decision lands in July. That last route came from LB826 of 2026, effective April 15, 2026 under its emergency clause; LB803 of the same session also rewrote 77-3512, operative July 18, 2026, and the Revisor of Statutes correlated the two under 49-769 so the printed section carries both. A rejection by the county assessor is appealed to the county board of equalization within thirty days. A denial by the Tax Commissioner is challenged by a petition for redetermination, Form 458P, within thirty days.