West Virginia Military Retired Pay Income Tax Exemption

West Virginia exempts military retired pay from the personal income tax completely. There is no dollar cap, no age threshold, no years-of-service formula, and no disability requirement. The exemption is a decreasing modification in West Virginia Code 11-21-12(c)(7)(C). The history matters only because older guidance still reflects it. Before 2018 the exemption was capped: two percent per year of active duty against the first $30,000 for tax years 2001 and 2002, then a flat first $20,000 from 2003. For taxable years beginning after December 31, 2017, the cap is gone and the whole of military retirement income from the regular Armed Forces, Reserves, and National Guard comes out. For taxable years beginning after December 31, 2018 the language was widened again, to retirement income from the uniformed services generally: Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force, Coast Guard, Public Health Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, reserves, and National Guard. Retirees of the Public Health Service and NOAA commissioned corps are inside this exemption, which almost no state guidance mentions. Survivorship annuities are named in the statute in each of those clauses. A Survivor Benefit Plan annuity paid to a surviving spouse is exempt on the same terms as the retiree's own pay. The exemption reaches income "to the extent included in federal adjusted gross income," which is the ordinary mechanism: the pay arrives in your federal AGI, and West Virginia subtracts it. Retirement pay that never entered federal AGI, such as VA disability compensation or disability retirement pay excluded under federal law, is already outside the West Virginia base and does not need this modification. One drafting curiosity is worth knowing because it is unusual and it is real. Subdivision (7)(D) provides that if any provision of the military retirement exemption is found by a court to violate the state or federal constitution, or is held to extend to persons other than those specified, the entire subdivision becomes null and void by operation of law. The exemption is written to collapse rather than be judicially widened. Nothing has triggered it, but a veteran reading the section will find that sentence and it means what it says. Two adjacent items complete the picture for a retired veteran's West Virginia return. Social Security has its own decreasing modification and is fully exempt for every taxpayer from the 2026 tax year forward, which has its own entry. And state and federal civil service pensions are not covered here: those get only the separate $2,000 modification in 11-21-12(c)(5), so a veteran with both a military pension and a federal civilian pension should not assume the second one follows the first.