Ohio Disabled Veteran Homestead Exemption

Ohio's homestead exemption is a credit on the property tax bill. It removes the tax that would be charged on a slice of the home's market value. It does not wipe out the whole bill. The Department of Taxation indexes that slice. For a disabled veteran, the published reduction is $58,000 for tax year 2025 real property and tax year 2026 manufactured or mobile homes, and $59,400 for tax year 2026 real property and tax year 2027 manufactured or mobile homes. The ordinary senior and disability homestead is about half of that, and it has an income test. The veteran credit does not. The Department of Veterans Services and the disabled-veteran application, DTE 105I, use the same test. The applicant is a veteran of the armed forces, including the reserves or the National Guard, discharged or released from active duty under honorable conditions, who has a total disability rating of 100% for a service-connected disability or combination of service-connected disabilities, or a total disability rating for compensation at 100% based on individual unemployability. There is no income cap on this enhanced credit. The home has to be owned and occupied as the principal residence on January 1 of the year of the application. The credit covers the dwelling and up to one acre. File with the county auditor by December 31 for real property. A manufactured or mobile home application is due December 31 of the year before the tax year. A surviving spouse of a disabled veteran can receive the same enhanced credit, with no income test. The taxation department's annual report says a 2024 law extended that to a spouse of a disabled veteran who died before the qualifying rating was issued. Use the auditor's surviving-spouse instructions for that case. The spouse's credit is not for life: Revised Code section 323.152(A)(2)(b) continues it "through the tax year in which the surviving spouse dies or remarries". The statute is Revised Code section 323.152(A)(2), with the veteran test in section 323.151. It reaches a home in a housing cooperative the veteran occupies as well as one the veteran owns, and a manufactured or mobile home is covered by the parallel reduction in section 4503.065(B). (Division (B) of 323.152 is the separate owner-occupancy rollback, not the manufactured home credit.) The department's own DTE 105I, still at revision 10/19, describes a $50,000 reduction and defines a surviving spouse as the spouse of a veteran who was receiving the exemption in the year of death, which is narrower than 323.151(L). $50,000 was the figure before the inflation adjustment in House Bill 33. Use the department's current reduction table and the statute, not those sentences on the form, and expect county auditors who post the form to repeat them. House Bill 96, signed in June 2025, lets a board of county commissioners adopt a local-option homestead exemption of the same size as the state credit (Revised Code 319.304). A homeowner who already has the state credit gets the local one automatically. It is not in force until that county adopts it, and the state does not reimburse schools for the local piece. The state does reimburse schools for the state credit. Few counties took it up: the County Commissioners Association of Ohio counted nine counties that used it, and some, such as Butler and Lorain, adopted it for tax year 2025 only. Each county entry says what that county did. One-time relief for tax year 2026. Section 19 of House Bill 479, in force September 23, 2026, gives every home that qualifies for a homestead reduction under 323.152(A) for tax year 2026, the disabled veteran reduction included, an equal share of the State's Property Tax Relief Fund, taken off the first-half tax bill issued in early 2027 (tax year 2027 for a manufactured or mobile home). The county auditor counts the qualifying homes on November 1, 2026, so a veteran newly rated 100%, or newly paid at 100% for unemployability, should have DTE 105I filed and approved before then to share in it; several auditors ask for applications in October. Auditors estimate the share at roughly $400 to $500 a home. It is a single payment and does not change the credit in later years. A larger owner-occupancy credit from tax year 2026. Substitute House Bill 186, signed December 19, 2025 and in force March 20, 2026, raises the owner-occupancy credit in 323.152(B)(2), which every homestead gets, the veteran's included, from 2.5 percent of the taxes charged by qualifying levies to 5.70 percent for tax year 2026, 8.92 percent for 2027, 12.15 percent for 2028 and 15.38 percent from 2029 (a year later for a manufactured or mobile home); at the same time it phases the 10 percent rollback on residential property in 319.302 down to 7.5, 5 and 2.5 percent and then to nothing, and adds a reduction for school districts at the 20-mill floor (319.303). Tax year 2026 is billed in 2027, so this is what county auditors mean when they tell their boards the homestead credit "will be doubled in 2027". It does not change the disabled veteran credit's $59,400 slice of value, which is figured on the effective tax rate less the 319.302 rollback and the owner-occupancy credit (323.152(A)(1)(c)(iv)), so a veteran's disabled veteran credit and owner-occupancy credit together still depend on local millage. House Bill 186 had added the 20-mill floor reduction to that subtraction; House Bill 479, in force September 23, 2026, took it out again. The ordinary disability homestead, for a person who is permanently and totally disabled but does not meet this veteran test, is a different application and it does have an income test.