New Mexico Exemption From Special Benefit Assessments for 100 Percent Disabled Veterans

Section 7-37-5.4, enacted in 2015 and not amended since, exempts property owned by a disabled veteran and occupied as the veteran's principal residence from "the imposition of a special benefit assessment". Why it matters. A special benefit assessment is a levy on property that a particular improvement benefits, outside the Property Tax Code: conservancy district assessments under The Conservancy Act of New Mexico, public improvement district assessments, tax increment development district levies and similar charges. They appear on the same county bill but are not property tax, so the veteran and disabled veteran exemptions do not reduce them. In the middle Rio Grande valley the conservancy district levy alone can be a noticeable part of the bill. The higher bar. Unlike the property tax exemption, which became proportional in 2026, this section still defines a disabled veteran as one determined "to have a one hundred percent permanent and total service-connected disability", with a discharge other than dishonorable or bad conduct. House Bill 47 of 2025 changed the definition in section 7-37-5.1 and left this one alone, so the two exemptions now use different tests. Individual unemployability. The words are a one hundred percent permanent and total disability, not a one hundred percent rating. A veteran paid at the total rate through unemployability that VA has found permanent has a strong argument, and nothing in the statute or the rule excludes it; the statute does not say either way. Surviving spouse. Subsection B extends it to a surviving spouse married to the veteran at death who keeps occupying the home and "has remained unmarried since the time of the disabled veteran's death". Note that the property tax exemption in section 7-37-5.1 says nothing about remarriage in its own words. A rule that points the other way. 3.6.6.13 NMAC, subsection A, paragraph (2), adopted in July 2024 when the only disabled veteran exemption was the 100 percent one, says "The disabled veteran exemption applies to special benefit assessments". Read literally after 2026 that would carry the proportional exemption onto special assessments too. The statute is the narrower and the later-construed text; claim under section 7-37-5.4 and, if you are below 100 percent, ask the assessor how the rule is being applied. Claim it with the county assessor and the district that levies the assessment, with the VA letter showing a permanent and total rating.