West Virginia $20,000 Homestead Exemption

West Virginia's homestead exemption takes the first $20,000 of assessed value of an owner-occupied home out of ad valorem property tax. It is in West Virginia Code 11-6B-3 and it is not a veterans benefit. It is available to any owner who is sixty-five or older, or who is certified as permanently and totally disabled. A veteran reaches it the same way anyone else does, by being certified permanently and totally disabled, and the Department of Veterans Assistance's description of it as something for veterans "rated 100 percent permanent and disabled" overstates the connection. Nothing in the section mentions military service as a route to the exemption. Two facts worth having before you judge it. The $20,000 is assessed value, not market value, and West Virginia assesses at sixty percent of market value. Twenty thousand of assessed value is therefore about $33,300 of house. On a home worth more than that, the exemption covers a slice and the rest is taxed. The figure has not changed since 1990. The last enacted amendment to 11-6B-3 was House Bill 201 in the 1990 second special session. Bills to raise it keep being introduced and keep failing: Senate Bill 144 in the 2026 regular session, which would have phased in an increase, died in House Finance on March 5, 2026, and Senate Bill 724 in 2025 did not pass either. Anything describing a larger West Virginia homestead exemption is describing a bill, not the law. Now the part that is genuinely about military service, and that no summary of West Virginia veterans benefits mentions. The exemption normally requires that the owner have been a West Virginia resident for the two consecutive calendar years preceding the tax year. That test is what catches a veteran who spent a career stationed elsewhere. Section 11-6B-3(a) waives it: a person who was a resident of this state when entering active military service, who maintained West Virginia as their state of residence throughout that service, and who returns to the state and buys a home on retirement from the military, or on earlier separation due to a permanent and total physical or mental disability, is deemed to satisfy the two-year residency requirement. The Tax Commissioner may specify acceptable proof by regulation. So a retiring servicemember who kept West Virginia as their home of record can claim the exemption in their first year back, provided they otherwise qualify on age or disability. Without that clause they would wait two years. Two other limits apply to everyone. Only one exemption is allowed per homestead regardless of how many qualified owners live there, so two qualifying spouses get $20,000 between them rather than each. And an owner receiving a similar exemption in another state is ineligible, which the application tests by sworn affidavit. The exemption attaches to the home you occupy on the July 1 assessment date and applies to the following tax year, and it does not transfer to a new home until the next July 1. Apply through your county assessor. This exemption is separate from, and stacks with, the disabled veteran real property tax credit, which is a refundable credit against state income tax for the property tax you actually paid.