South Carolina Vehicle Property Tax Exemption for a Disabled Veteran

Section 12-37-220(B)(3) exempts from property tax "two private passenger vehicles owned or leased by any disabled veteran, or the spouse of the disabled veteran if the spouse resides with the veteran and the vehicle is registered at that same address, designated by the veteran". Then it names two ways to prove it, and one of them no longer exists. The first route is a vehicle "for which special license tags have been issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles under the provisions of Sections 56-3-1110 to 56-3-1130". Those three sections were repealed by 2021 Act No. 38, Section 2, effective May 6, 2022. Article 7 of Chapter 3, Title 56 now carries the heading "Free Vehicular Registration for Disabled Veterans [Repealed]" and nothing else. The disabled veteran plate moved to Section 56-3-14940 in the new Article 149 and the property tax code was never updated to follow it. The second route survives intact: "in lieu of the license, if the veteran has a certificate signed by the county service officer or the Veterans Administration of the total and permanent disability which must be filed with the Department of Motor Vehicles". That is the one with a live statutory basis, and it is also the one that does not require the veteran to give up an ordinary plate. In practice the Department of Revenue treats a current disabled veteran plate as satisfying the item and the counties follow, which is the sensible reading: the repeal renumbered the plate, it did not abolish it, and Section 56-3-15000 expressly protects plates first issued under previous requirements. But the words a veteran or an assessor reads point at a repealed article, and if a county balks, the certificate route is the one to use. The dangling reference appears a second time in the same title. Section 56-3-1910(I), the handicapped license plate section, says "a person who qualifies for a license plate under this section and also qualifies as a disabled veteran under Section 56-3-1110 must be issued the license plate provided for in this section free of charge." Section 56-3-1110 has been repealed since 2022. The free handicapped plate for a disabled veteran now depends on a definition that is not in the code. Two vehicles is the cap and the veteran designates which two. The exemption follows the spouse's vehicle only while the spouse resides with the veteran and the vehicle is registered at the same address. The surviving spouse gets one vehicle, not two: "the exemption extends to the surviving spouse of the person on one private passenger vehicle owned or leased by the spouse for their lifetime or until the remarriage of the surviving spouse". Note that the real property exemption in item (B)(1) carries three surviving spouse routes including the spouse of a member killed in action, and this item carries none of them. The Department of Revenue states the consequence plainly: surviving spouses of veterans killed in action do not qualify for the vehicle exemption. The house and the car are on different rules. A trust holding legal title works here too, on the same terms as the dwelling: if the beneficiary qualifies otherwise and uses the vehicle, the vehicle is exempt. Leased vehicles are inside the exemption. The item says "owned or leased" in every clause, which matters in a state where the vehicle property tax is billed with the registration. The first year works differently from the house. The whole-year rule 2024 Act No. 116 wrote into Section 12-37-610(B) is tied to the exemption in item (B)(1), the house, and says nothing about vehicles. The Department of Revenue applies the vehicle exemption only to vehicle taxes that come due on or after the date of the total and permanent rating; a vehicle bill that fell due before the rating date is not exempted for that year. That is the department's reading rather than words in item (B)(3), but nothing in the statute contradicts it.