Tennessee Disabled Veteran Property Tax Relief

Section 67-5-704 pays a disabled veteran out of the state general fund for all or part of the local property taxes actually paid on the home. The reimbursement is computed on the first one hundred seventy-five thousand dollars of full market value: that value is multiplied by twenty-five percent to get the effective assessed value, which is then multiplied by a tax rate adjusted to reflect the relationship between appraised and market value in that jurisdiction as determined by the State Board of Equalization. In most of Tennessee the result lands somewhere between one thousand and two thousand dollars a year. Call it what the statute calls it. This is not an exemption and the home does not come off the roll. The veteran owes the whole bill and the state pays or reimburses part of it, which is why 67-5-701(c) lets the collecting official advance a credit for the projected amount and then claw it back from the tax jurisdiction if later processing shows the applicant was ineligible. There are three ways in and only one of them is a rating. Subsection (b) defines a disabled veteran as a person who served in the armed forces and who acquired, in connection with that service, a disability from paraplegia or permanent paralysis of both legs and the lower part of the body resulting from traumatic injury or disease to the spinal cord or brain, or from legal blindness, or from loss or loss of use of two or more limbs from any service-connected cause; or acquired one hundred percent permanent total disability resulting from having served as a prisoner of war; or acquired service-connected permanent and total disability as determined by VA. A veteran who lost the use of two limbs qualifies on the first route at whatever rating VA assigned, and asking that veteran for a combined percentage is the wrong question. There is no income limit. That is worth saying plainly because Tennessee had one for a single year and the memory of it persists. The elderly and disabled homeowner programs in 67-5-702 and 67-5-703 are means tested at $38,470 of 2025 income for tax year 2026; this program is not, and the Comptroller's brochure prints the income box for those two categories and omits it for the veteran categories. The cap has moved twice in a decade and the wrong figures are still in circulation in both directions. Public Chapter 481 of 2015, titled the "Save the Tax Relief Act," cut the cap from $175,000 to $100,000 and added a $60,000 income limit that applied only to applicants who had not received a reimbursement for tax year 2014. Public Chapter 1065 of 2016 deleted the income limit outright. The $175,000 came back through section 37 of Public Chapter 181 of 2017, the IMPROVE Act, better known as the gas tax bill, effective July 1, 2017. Both standalone veterans bills filed that year to do the same thing died in the Local Government Subcommittee. Anyone quoting $100,000 is quoting 2015 through 2017; anyone quoting $200,000 is quoting Senate Bill 1798 of 2026, which is not law. Apply to the county trustee, and to the city collecting official as well if the property is inside city limits. The form is the F-16, which is a consent for VA to release disability and income information to the state. The window opens when the 2026 tax bill arrives and closes thirty-five days after the date taxes in that jurisdiction become delinquent, which varies by jurisdiction rather than being a single statewide date. Paying the full tax by that date is not a condition of eligibility, and 67-5-701(d)(1) says so in terms. Two protections that are easy to miss. Subsection (i) makes any information concerning the disability status of a disabled veteran confidential and not subject to inspection under the Tennessee public records law, available only to officials who administer, enforce or audit the program. And subsection (d) makes the VA determination conclusive for purposes of the section, which removes the county's discretion to second-guess a rating decision it disagrees with. Subsection (c) is absolute and has no counterpart in the discharge tests elsewhere in this catalog: under no conditions shall property tax relief extend to any person who was dishonorably discharged from any of the armed services. Subsection (h) forecloses stacking. The refund under this section is in lieu of any payment under 67-5-702 or 67-5-703, so a veteran who is also sixty-five and low income picks one program rather than collecting both. For most qualifying veterans this one is worth far more, because $175,000 of covered value against $33,600 is not a close comparison.