Utah Active Duty Property Tax Exemption

A complete property tax holiday on a home, earned by a deployment. Utah is the only state in this catalog with an exemption in this shape. What you get. Section 59-2a-601, subsection 1: "The total taxable value of an active duty claimant's primary residence is exempt from taxation for the calendar year after the year in which the active duty claimant completed qualifying military service." Not a percentage, not a capped amount. The whole taxable value of the primary residence for one year. What qualifies. Section 59-2a-101, subsection 25 defines "qualifying active duty military service" as "at least 200 days, regardless of whether consecutive, in any continuous 365-day period of active duty military service outside the state in an active component of the United States Armed Forces or a reserve component of the United States Armed Forces", where the days "were completed in the year before an individual applies" and "have not previously been counted as qualifying active duty military service" for this exemption. Unpack that. The 200 days need not be consecutive, but they must fall inside one continuous 365-day window. They must be **outside Utah**, so an activation at a Utah installation does not count. Both active and reserve components qualify, so a mobilised Guard or reserve member is squarely inside. And the days cannot be reused: one deployment funds one exemption. Who can claim. Section 59-2a-101, subsection 2 defines "active duty claimant" as a member of an active or reserve component who performed qualifying active duty military service and applies for the exemption. Note that the claimant is the service member, and section 59-2a-601, subsection 2 requires the claimant to own the eligible property at some time during the calendar year claimed. Applying, under section 59-2a-602. File by September 1 of the calendar year for which you are claiming, with the county where you reside on that September 1, in the year after the year you completed the service. Include "a completed travel voucher or other satisfactory evidence of eligible military service" and "a statement that lists the dates on which the 200 days of qualifying active duty military service began and ended". The county must receipt it within 30 days. You do have to apply again for each deployment. Subsection 1, paragraph (b) requires the claimant to "claim one exemption only in the year the active duty claimant files the application", and the Tax Commission puts it plainly in Publication 36: "You must apply each year you are eligible. Only one exemption is allowed for each period of qualifying service." That is the opposite of the veteran disability exemption, which continues without refiling. Subsection 4 does say that after a receipt the county may not require another application except on a change of ownership or occupancy, which sits awkwardly beside the one-exemption-per-application rule; the practical answer is to file each time you complete a qualifying 200 days and to keep the receipt. The deadline bends in four situations. Subsection 3 requires a one-year extension where the county legislative body finds that the claimant or an immediate family member had an illness or injury that prevented filing, that an immediate family member died that year, that the claimant was not physically present in the state for at least six consecutive months that year, or that missing the deadline "would be against equity or good conscience" and "was beyond the reasonable control of the active duty claimant". The third of those will describe most deployments. Section 59-2a-108 separately allows an extension to December 31 for good cause and requires a refund of any overpayment of $1 or more. Two practical points. The exemption arrives the year after the qualifying service, so a deployment finishing in 2026 produces a 2027 exemption claimed by September 1, 2027. And nothing in the chapter makes this exemption exclusive of the veteran disability exemption in part 5, so a veteran with a rating who later deploys again as a reservist is looking at two different exemptions on different facts; ask the county how it applies both to the same parcel in the same year. The section as it now stands was written in the 2025 recodification: section 59-2a-601 was enacted by chapter 172 of the 2025 general session and section 59-2a-602 renumbered and amended by the same chapter.