Virginia Beach Disabled Veteran Real Estate Tax Exemption

This is how the City of Virginia Beach applies the statewide disabled-veteran real estate exemption. City Code section 35-42 makes the Commissioner of the Revenue the administrator, and the Commissioner's Veteran Services division takes the application. There is no income test and no net-worth test. Section 35-42(b) is the local addition. The exemption extends "in the same manner to any additional levies imposed by special service districts", such as the Sandbridge special service district and the neighborhood dredging districts. A qualifying veteran in one of those districts does not pay the district levy on the exempt home either. The same subsection applies to the line-of-duty surviving spouse exemption. The Commissioner's page states the test as a VA rating of 100% service-connected, permanent, and total. It does not describe an individual unemployability path. Statewide guidance from the Department of Veterans Services treats individual unemployability rated permanent and total as meeting it, so a veteran on that path should apply with the VA letter showing permanent and total status. A surviving spouse qualifies when the veteran died on or after January 1, 2011 and the spouse has not remarried. The two city offices describe this differently. The Commissioner of the Revenue, who decides the application, correctly says that since the 2019 amendment the exemption goes with the spouse to a different principal residence, including for a spouse who first applies from a home the veteran never lived in. The Real Estate Assessor's page still says the spouse must continue "to occupy the real property", which was the rule before July 1, 2019. Section 58.1-3219.5(B) governs, and the spouse may move. The Commissioner's page does not state an acreage. Its line-of-duty surviving spouse page says that exemption covers the home and up to 10 acres, and sections 58.1-3219.5(C) and 58.1-3219.9(D) tie both exemptions to the same acreage, so a veteran whose home sits on more than one acre should ask for the same 10 acres. The city does not print the average assessed value that caps the line-of-duty spouse exemption.