Donating a Nevada Veteran’s Exemption to the Veterans Homes

Nevada lets a veteran turn the exemption into a donation, and it built the mechanism into the annual renewal form so it takes no extra paperwork. NRS 361.0905, subsection 1: any person who qualifies for an exemption under NRS 361.090 or NRS 361.091 may, in lieu of claiming it, "pay to the county tax receiver all or any portion of the amount by which the tax would be reduced if the person claimed the exemption" and direct the receiver to deposit that amount for credit to the Gift Account for the Veterans Home in Southern Nevada or the Gift Account for the Veterans Home in Northern Nevada established under NRS 417.145. "All or any portion" is the useful part. This is not all or nothing. A veteran can claim most of the exemption and donate a slice of it. Subsection 2 requires the designation to be made on a form provided by the Nevada Tax Commission. In practice the designation is built into the renewal form the county assessor already mails: NRS 361.090, subsection 4(b) and NRS 361.091, subsection 4(b) both require the assessor's annual renewal form to include "the designation of any amount to be credited" to either gift account. So the decision is made by filling in a box on a form the veteran is already returning. Subsection 3 routes the money: the county tax receiver deposits it with the State Treasurer for credit to the chosen gift account. And it sets a ceiling: "The State Treasurer shall not accept more than a total of $2,000,000 for credit to a Gift Account pursuant to this section and NRS 371.1035 during any fiscal year." Read the ceiling carefully. It is a combined cap across the property tax waiver in this section and the vehicle governmental services tax waiver in NRS 371.1035, and it applies per gift account per fiscal year. A veteran donating late in a fiscal year in which the cap has been reached may find the Treasurer cannot accept the money. The parallel provision for vehicles, NRS 371.1035, works the same way for the governmental services tax exemptions in NRS 371.103 and NRS 371.104, and the renewal forms for those exemptions carry the same designation box. Where the money goes. NRS 417.145 establishes the Veterans Home Account in the State General Fund and the two gift accounts. The gift accounts are separate from the operating account, so a donation supplements rather than replaces appropriated money, and NRS 417.145 requires an annual report of expenditures made from those gift accounts, which is the document to read to see what the donations actually bought. Why this is in the catalog rather than treated as trivia. For a veteran taking the general exemption the annual amount is on the order of $110 to $133, which some veterans would rather send to the homes than keep. For a veteran in the top disabled tier it is on the order of $1,100 to $1,330, which is a meaningful donation and is deductible for federal purposes as a payment to the State only to the extent federal law allows, which is a question for a tax preparer rather than for this catalog. The point of the entry is that the option exists, that it is partial as well as total, and that it is exercised on a form the veteran already receives. One thing the waiver does not do is preserve the exemption's other consequences. Paying the tax means paying the tax; there is no provision making the waived exemption count for any other purpose.