Every jurisdiction in this catalog has entries whose figures move when a bill passes, whose act takes effect on a later date, or whose program is repealed while its agency keeps advertising it. This page watches each jurisdiction's law, follows a bill through its own jurisdiction's process where its stages are recorded, and names the catalog entries each instrument touches.
Showing 1 to 48 of 301 instruments. Tracked across 51 jurisdictions. Every other jurisdiction on the board is still watched by hand.
A bill that died is listed only where a guide, an agency, or a news story has described it as current law. That is the failure that puts a number in front of a veteran which no assessor, registrar, or school will honor.
▲Expands benefitsMakes receipt of a VA pension or any service-connected compensation a presumption that a defendant qualifies for a waiver of court fines and fees.
Enacted a new 11 Del. C. § 4107, effective 180 days after enactment, which the Code prints as March 8, 2027. A defendant who shows receipt of a listed public assistance benefit, including "Veterans Affairs pension or service-connected disability compensation", presumptively qualifies for a hardship waiver, and the court may impose fines or fees only if it finds them in the interest of justice. No rating or income threshold is attached to the VA benefits. Restitution, voluntary assessment traffic offences, toll evasion civil penalties and electronic monitoring violations are outside it. Watching until the effective date.
▼Restricts benefitsAdds a home-of-record restriction to the grant and a two-year application deadline for injuries sustained from January 1, 2027.
The Iowa Department of Veterans Affairs rescinded 801 Iowa Administrative Code chapter 11 and adopted a new chapter of the same title, adopted July 15, 2026 and effective September 9, 2026. Two provisions are new and neither appears in Iowa Code section 35A.14. Rule 11.1(3), after setting the $2,500 increments at 30, 60 and 90 day intervals while the veteran remains hospitalized or receiving military-authorized medical care or rehabilitation, adds: "Qualifying treatment or services must be provided in a location that is not the veteran’s home of record", so a veteran who continues authorized rehabilitation at home stops accruing increments. Rule 11.2(5) provides that "For any qualifying injury sustained on or after January 1, 2027, the department must receive an initial application within two years of the date of injury", where no deadline previously existed. Rule 11.1(4) confirms that eligibility survives discharge from the military while treatment continues, and rule 11.2(6) requires a written decision within thirty days. Tracked and flagged because the deadline is prospective and will catch veterans injured from New Year’s Day 2027 who have no reason to know of it; because the home-of-record restriction is a rule-only condition on a statutory benefit; and because the department’s own web page describes the grant as limited to an injury in a hazardous area or in service drawing combat or hazardous duty pay, a condition that appears in neither the statute nor these rules. The statute’s definition of severity, "as defined in the most recently published United States department of defense joint publication 1-02", points at a designation the Department of Defense discontinued; the rules do not use those terms at all.
▲Expands benefitsRequires at least one reserved veteran parking space at state-owned DMV offices and service centers.
Enacted 29 Del. C. § 6310A, effective six months after enactment on September 6, 2026, which is March 6, 2027, the date the bill record gives; the Code prints March 5, 2027. The Director of the Office of Management and Budget must designate at least one space for a veteran, as defined in 29 Del. C. § 8811, at 23 listed DMV offices, state service centers and state offices where the state owns the site, and is encouraged to do so where it leases. Parking in the space is prohibited. Watching until the effective date.
▲Expands benefitsOpens the free Gold Star plate to siblings and children of a fallen service member.
Amended 16 GCA 7120.3(b) to add siblings, including half- and step-siblings, and children, including adopted and step-children, to the parents, widows and widowers eligible for a free Gold Star plate. Signed September 1, 2026. The Gold Star property tax exemption in 11 GCA 24401.2 and the driver licence and registration fee waivers borrow 7120.3(b) but name only spouses and parents, so they did not widen.
▼Restricts benefitsRestarts the tuition exemption from new rules with no start date and puts veterans behind every other tuition-paying student for space.
Re-enacted 17 GCA Chapter 56 inside the fiscal year 2027 budget act, which lapsed into law without the Governor’s signature at the end of August 2026. Administration moves from the Commission on Post-Secondary Education to the University of Guam Board of Regents and the Guam Community College Board of Trustees, each of which has one hundred twenty days to adopt rules and sixty days after that to open applications, with exemptions processed from the next full semester; the April 1, 2026 start in P.L. 38-099 is gone. A tuition-paying student now includes anyone on loans, federal aid, scholarships or other waivers, so the space-available condition puts veterans behind every other student. The credit hour caps, the federal exhaustion rule and the residency tests are unchanged.
Sponsor
Committee on Rules, at the request of the GovernorLegislature
▲▼Expands and restrictsRaises the military pension exclusion to $25,000 at every age by 2029, but makes a retiree aged 60 or older first meet three or five years of Delaware domicile.
Amended 30 Del. C. § 1106(b)(3). For 2027 a taxpayer of any age may subtract the greater of the ordinary pension exclusion or $15,000 of United States military pension, for 2028 $20,000 and from 2029 $25,000. Before it a retiree aged 60 or older had no military-specific figure and shared one $12,500 exclusion with every other pension and retirement income. Senate Amendment 1 made the limits apply to each spouse separately on a joint return and added paragraph f.4., which lets a person aged 60 or older take any subtraction under paragraph (3) only after three years of Delaware domicile, or five if domiciled on or after January 1, 2027. The paragraph imposes nothing on a retiree under 60. Signed August 17, 2026, per the General Assembly’s bill record; the 2026 session laws are not yet published online, and the chapter number is the one the Code prints in the section history. Watching because the first increase applies to tax year 2027.
▲Expands benefitsRaised the Guard College Assistance lifetime cap to $25,000 and lifted the 130-hour limit for 2026-27.
For the fiscal year ending June 30, 2027, lets a South Carolina National Guard member qualify for College Assistance Program grants beyond the 130 semester hours in S.C. Code 59-114-30, allows up to one hundred percent of tuition and fees not exceeding twelve thousand dollars an academic year, and sets the lifetime maximum at twenty-five thousand dollars against the statute’s eighteen thousand. Ratified August 11, 2026; the Governor’s line-item vetoes of August 17, 2026 did not reach it. A proviso lapses with its fiscal year, so the statutory figures return unless the next appropriations act repeats it.
▲Expands benefitsLets a holder of a no-fee disabled veteran, POW, Medal of Honor or Purple Heart plate get a second set.
Amends 625 ILCS 5/3-609, 3-609.1, 3-609.3, 3-620, 3-623 and 3-806.2 and adds 3-609.4 so that a person eligible for one of these no-fee plates may register up to two vehicles, or receive a second set, on the same terms as the first. Until July 1, 2027 the one-vehicle limit governs.
▲Expands benefitsRequires 26 days of paid military leave a year for full-time firefighters and police officers.
Created the military leave for first responders act, MCL 419.221 to 419.229, with immediate effect on July 23, 2026. At the beginning of each year an organized fire department or a law enforcement agency, including the Department of State Police, a county sheriff’s office and a local police department, must provide each full-time member enlisted in the reserve components with not less than 26 days of paid military leave at the member’s regular pay rate, plus contractual fringe benefits for a member covered by a collective bargaining agreement. Leave may not be carried over or cashed out and lapses at the end of the year. A member who is not yet enlisted but has orders for a preinduction physical examination must be given paid leave to attend. Part-time, volunteer and paid on-call members are expressly excluded. The companion act, 2026 PA 57, amended MCL 32.273a so a local unit’s option to provide paid military leave is now subject to this act.
▲Expands benefitsCreates a grant and loan programme for veterans services funded by a new special veteran number plate.
Added RSA 110-B:92 to 110-B:101 and RSA 261:97-g to 261:97-i. The programme funds work on ending veteran homelessness, attracting and retaining veterans and matching their skills to employers, improving access to physical and mental health care, suicide prevention, oral health care and substance use disorder treatment, military skills transfer and certification, and education including apprenticeships and the trades. The authority is a public instrumentality organised as a nonprofit under RSA 292, governed by an eleven-member board of which five seats belong to the state veterans council. Funding comes from a new Special Veteran Number Plate renewed annually at $30 per set on top of the ordinary registration and plate fees: $1 per registration up to $50,000 a year is spent promoting the plate programme itself and the remainder goes to the first for veterans fund, distributed on priorities set by the governor and the state veterans council. A trust fund sits in the state treasurer’s office, nonlapsing and continually appropriated, and no state agency money may be transferred into it without authorisation from the general court. Administrative revenue is capped at $200,000 a fiscal year with the excess credited to the trust fund. Only municipalities, other political subdivisions and publicly-supported section 501(c) nonprofits may apply for assistance, which comes as grants, block grants and loans with up to half of each year’s assistance allowed to be loans whose repayments return to the plate fund. Tracked because the programme is three weeks old, no criteria or guidelines have been adopted under RSA 110-B:96, II, there is no grant history, and the first annual report is not due until December 1.
▲Expands benefitsAdds a veteran-owned business preference, raises paid military leave to 160 hours and ends the GI Bill offset.
Repealed thirteen sections and enacted twenty-four. Four changes move figures or gates in this catalog. New Mo. Rev. Stat. 34.069 gives a three-point bonus preference and a three percent goal to any honorably discharged veteran-owned enterprise, alongside the existing service-disabled preference in 34.074, and both sections now bar a business from taking points under one after taking them under the other, so the two are mutually exclusive rather than cumulative; both bind every political subdivision as well as the state. Section 105.270 raised paid military leave for state, county, municipal, school district and other public employees from 120 to 160 hours per federal fiscal year for federal service, leaving state-call duty uncapped. Section 40.490 gained two subsections extending all Servicemembers Civil Relief Act rights to Guard members on state active duty for more than thirty consecutive days, which the federal Act does not itself reach, and giving the member a private right of action alongside attorney general enforcement. And section 173.239 struck "GI Bill educational entitlements" from the list of aid applied before the National Guard tuition and fee waiver, so a Guard member holding Post-9/11 entitlement now keeps the waiver on top of it. The act also broadened the medals paragraph of 42.300 from named conflicts to any conflict identified under chapter 42 and created three medallion programmes at once. Tracked because published guidance still prints the 120-hour leave figure, and because the GI Bill offset deletion is invisible from the current statute text.
▲Expands benefitsPoints several veteran tax credits, the Veterans Home and the employment preference at the RSA 21:50 definition, which reaches a general discharge.
A conforming act with substantive effect. Effective August 31, 2026 it replaced older discharge language with a cross-reference to the definition in RSA 21:50 across the code, touching at least RSA 72:28-b (all veterans’ tax credit), RSA 72:35 (tax credit for service-connected total disability), RSA 72:36-a (exemption for a specially adapted homestead), RSA 119:1 and 119:2 (the New Hampshire Veterans’ Home and the qualifications of its board of managers), RSA 119:6 (veteran employment preference at the home), RSA 283:4 (preference in public employment) and RSA 261:86 (special number plates for former prisoners of war, Purple Heart recipients and Pearl Harbor survivors). Because RSA 21:50, I(a)(2) reaches an honorable discharge, a general discharge under honorable conditions and an uncharacterized discharge based on a service-connected injury, illness or disability, every one of those provisions is now open to a veteran with a general discharge who was previously outside it. RSA 72:28, the standard and optional wartime credit, was not amended and still requires an honorable discharge, so the two neighbouring property tax credits now carry different discharge tests. Tracked because no published New Hampshire benefit guidance reflects the change, a veteran refused before August 31, 2026 should apply again, and because RSA 72:27-a, IV arguably requires a town that previously adopted RSA 72:28-b, 72:35 or 72:36-a to vote again before the wider eligibility applies locally, which is unresolved.
▲Expands benefitsFunds the VMSDEP stipend at up to $2,200 a year, above the $2,000 in the Code.
Designates $16,780,000 in fiscal 2027 and $19,250,000 in fiscal 2028 for up to a $2,200 annual stipend for room, board, books and supplies under the Virginia Military Survivors and Dependents Education Program, above the $2,000 in Code of Virginia 23.1-608.1, which lets the appropriation act set the figure. The amount is an estimate SCHEV may raise or lower with the number of eligible students, so the stipend exists only as funded. Item 131 K adds annual VMSDEP reporting by eligibility category and an audit by the Auditor of Public Accounts.
Sponsor
Luke E. TorianDemocratic, House, District 24
Touches Code of Virginia § 23.1-608 · Code of Virginia § 23.1-608.1
Amended R.I. Gen. Laws 44-3-4 so Cranston’s (a)(1) and (a)(2) veterans exemptions, each formerly up to $3,000 of value, are tax credits of up to $182.90 a year, and its (b) specially adapted housing exemption, formerly up to $30,000, is a credit of up to $4,725 a year, each adjusted every three years after revaluation by no more than the CPI. The same act converts Cranston’s blind, elderly and disability exemptions under 44-3-12, 44-3-13 and 44-3-22. Effective on passage.
▲Expands benefitsWould authorize $1.25 billion in bonds for Cal-Vet farm, home and mobilehome loans if the voters approve it.
Not yet in force. The Veterans and Affordable Housing Bond Act of 2026, signed June 25, 2026 as an urgency statute, becomes operative only if the voters adopt it at the November 3, 2026 statewide general election. It would authorize $11.25 billion of general obligation bonds, $10 billion for affordable rental and ownership programs and $1.25 billion for the Cal-Vet farm, home and mobilehome purchase program in new Military and Veterans Code section 998.750 and following. No Cal-Vet eligibility rule or loan term changes.
▲Expands benefitsRaises the floor of the credit from $200 to $400 and adds the unmarried widow or widower.
Amended subsection (c) of R.I. Gen. Laws 44-3-4 so Tiverton’s credit for a totally disabled veteran is $400 or greater, up from $200, and extends to the unmarried widow or widower, and struck the separate $400 credit for the totally disabled in (a)(3)(vii). Effective on passage.
▲Expands benefitsAdds a route for a veteran 75 or older rated 70 percent, and the companion act lets the plate pass to a veteran's spouse.
Both enacted June 19, 2026 and effective on passage, each amending R.I. Gen. Laws 31-6-8 from the older text. Chapter 248 adds a route for a veteran 75 or older rated 70 percent; chapter 250 lets Disabled Veteran plates pass to a spouse when the veteran can no longer drive and to a surviving spouse until remarriage. Neither prints the other’s change.
▲▼Expands and restrictsWould exempt the first $250,000 of a homestead from non-school levies, but make new residents wait five years.
Not yet law. A joint resolution passed in the June 1 to 3, 2026 special session and placed on the November 3, 2026 general election ballot as Amendment 3; it needs 60 percent of the vote. It would exempt the first $250,000 of a homestead’s value from all levies other than school district levies, require a general law scheduling full elimination, limit how local governments use the remaining property tax, cap non-homestead assessment growth, and make anyone who establishes residency after January 1, 2027 wait five years for the increased exemption. It reprints the combat-related disabled veteran discount in Article VII, section 6(e) unchanged. A veteran fully exempt under section 196.081 gains nothing; the $5,000 exemption and the combat discount would apply to a smaller bill.
▲Expands benefitsAdds individual unemployability to the full exemption and drops the income test for veterans from 2027.
The 2026-2027 tax omnibus, signed June 13, 2026. Section 34(B) applies its rewrite of ARS 42-11111 to tax years after December 31, 2026: the primary residence of a veteran rated 100 percent or with total disability based on individual unemployability is fully exempt; the income limit applies only to widows, widowers and persons with total and permanent disabilities; surviving spouses of fully and partially exempt veterans get new subsections F and G; a move needs a transfer form within sixty days. The ARS page already prints this text.
Added Exeter to subsection (c) of R.I. Gen. Laws 44-3-4, so its exemption for a veteran VA has determined to be totally disabled through a service-connected disability is $5,000 commencing with the December 31, 2026 assessment. Effective on passage.
▲Expands benefitsAccepts proof of any qualifying discharge rather than only an honorable one for the veterans' property tax exemptions and extends the allied service exemption to general discharges.
Lets the proof of service show any discharge that qualifies rather than only an honorable one, extends the Second World War allied service exemption to general discharges and similar characterizations, makes the assessor rather than the tax collector receive proof for retroactive disability-based claims, and specifies which grand lists a town compares when raising exemption amounts after a revaluation. Generally effective October 1, 2026 and applicable to assessment years from then.
▼Restricts benefitsRescinds the rules that described how to apply for the war orphans educational assistance, leaving the statutory scholarship with no published application process.
The Iowa Department of Veterans Affairs rescinded and reserved 801 Iowa Administrative Code chapter 9, "War Orphans Educational Assistance Fund", filed April 2, 2026 and effective June 3, 2026. The filing’s own purpose statement reads: "The purpose of this rulemaking is to rescind Chapter 9 with no replacement." No public comments were received at either the January 5 or January 6, 2026 hearing. Iowa Code section 35A.13, subsection 9 was not repealed: the war orphans educational assistance account still exists, the pre-September 11, 2001 tier still caps assistance at $600 a year and $3,000 for a lifetime, the post-September 11 tier still reaches the highest Regents resident undergraduate tuition rate five times over, and the department still advertises the programme as the Children of the Fallen, or Branstad-Reynolds, Scholarship Fund. Tracked and flagged because a live statutory scholarship now has no published rule describing how to apply, what documents to file, how financial need is established, or what a reasonably necessary expense is, and because section 35A.13, subsection 9, paragraph "d" makes the commission’s eligibility decision final with no statutory appeal. Recorded also because the filing cites its legal authority as Iowa Code section 35A.14, the injured veterans grant programme, rather than section 35A.13, which creates the fund it rescinded the rules for. The same bulletin carried ARC 0249D and ARC 0250D rescinding the Vietnam conflict veterans bonus rules, which match statutes that had already repealed themselves.
▲Expands benefitsCut the lifetime fur harvester license fee to $5.
Amended Iowa Code section 483A.24, subsection 17 to strike the authority for the Natural Resource Commission to set the fee by rule and to fix it in the statute instead: the department shall issue a lifetime fur harvester licence "upon payment of a fee of five dollars, and any processing fee" to a resident of Iowa who served on federal active duty and was disabled during military service, with "disabled" meaning entitled to a service connected rating under 38 U.S.C. chapter 11. Tracked and flagged because the Natural Resource Commission fee schedule at 571 Iowa Administrative Code 15.10(1), paragraph "aa" as published still prices the lifetime fur harvester licence for a disabled veteran at $59.50. The act was approved on June 2, 2026, after the rule page was published, and the statute governs, so a veteran quoted $59.50 at a licence agent is being quoted a superseded figure of more than eleven times the statutory fee. The subsection itself was added only recently, which is why the rule and the statute have not yet met.
Appropriated from the general fund to the department of veterans affairs for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2026: $1,369,205 and 15.00 full-time equivalent positions for department administration; $8,145,736 for the Iowa Veterans Home; and $2,200,000 "For transfer to the Iowa finance authority for the continuation of the home ownership assistance program for persons who are or were eligible members of the armed forces of the United States or eligible service members pursuant to section 16.54". Tracked because Iowa Code section 16.54, subsection 6 limits implementation of the homeownership programme "to the extent of the amount appropriated or otherwise made available", so the appropriation is the real eligibility constraint: at the $5,000 grant the Iowa Finance Authority publishes, $2,200,000 funds on the order of 440 awards for the year in a state with well over two hundred thousand veterans. The same subsection lets the authority limit how long an award is reserved pending closing, so the figure is worth knowing before a veteran goes under contract. 2026 Iowa Acts chapter 1163 separately appropriated $180,000 for sidewalk repair and replacement at the Iowa Veterans Home.
▲Expands benefitsRaises paid military leave for state and local public employees from three weeks to four a year.
Amended C.R.S. 28-3-601(1) so a Guard or reserve member employed by the state or any political subdivision, municipal corporation or other public agency gets paid leave of up to the equivalent of four weeks of work on the regular schedule per leave year, up from three weeks (about 15 working days).
▲Expands benefitsBars any fee for the medical records a veteran requests for a disability claim.
No provider, facility, or custodian of healthcare information may charge any fee for preparing, reproducing, handling, or transmitting medical records requested by or for a veteran for the sole purpose of a disability claim. The Department of Veterans Affairs legislative release described it as a per-facility waiver; the enrolled act says once per veteran.
▲Expands benefitsExtends Hawaii National Guard tuition assistance to graduate degrees at the University of Hawaii.
Amended HRS 121-45(a)(2) so the adjutant general may award tuition assistance, subject to the availability of funds, to qualifying enlisted members, warrant officers and company grade officers working toward undergraduate or graduate degrees at the University of Hawaii. Effective July 1, 2026. The published HRS still prints the undergraduate-only text.
▲Expands benefitsRaises the ceilings on the optional veterans', combat service and surviving spouse credits, though a town must vote again before its amount rises.
Amends RSA 72:28, II to raise the optional veterans’ tax credit band from $51 to $750 up to $51 to $1,000; RSA 72:28-c, II to raise the optional tax credit for combat service from $50 to $500 up to $50 to $750; and RSA 72:29-a, II to raise the optional surviving spouse credit from $701 to $2,000 up to $701 to $2,500. All three take effect April 1, 2027, and the published statutes print the current and future versions of each paragraph side by side under bracketed effective-date headers. Tracked as watching a later date, and flagged in substance for a reason particular to New Hampshire: none of these increases reaches a single veteran automatically. RSA 72:27-a, IV provides that an amendment to a credit amount applies in a municipality that previously adopted the provision only after the municipality complies with the adoption procedure, so a town that adopted a credit in an earlier year keeps its voted amount until a fresh warrant article or council vote passes. The act raises ceilings, not credits, and a veteran told their credit is going up in April 2027 should ask whether their town has voted.
▲▼Expands and restrictsReplaces the four joined tests with a single permanent and total test, but makes the exemption a local option again.
The budget made the full exemption a local option again for each county, city, town, village and school district, required a VA letter stating the veteran is permanently and totally disabled as a result of military service, and added a 30-day notice to the Department of Veterans’ Services, which must keep a public list of adopters. Applies to rolls based on taxable status dates on or after October 1, 2026. The Department of Taxation and Finance cites it with chapters 672 of 2025 and 77 of 2026.
=No change to benefitsRenumbered the disabled veteran motor vehicle sales tax exemption without changing its words.
The 2026 tax act deleted an earlier clause of Minn. Stat. 297B.03 and renumbered the exemption for a veteran with a total service-connected disability as clause (15), effective the day after final enactment. The words did not change; forms and guides citing clause (16) are describing the same exemption.
▲Expands benefitsRequires school districts to issue a high school diploma on request to Korean and Vietnam War veterans.
Enacted Minn. Stat. 127A.135, requiring a school district or charter school to issue a high school diploma on request to a veteran under 197.447 who was unable to complete their high school education, for reasons related or unrelated to their military service, and who served during the Korean Conflict from June 27, 1950 to January 31, 1955 or during the Vietnam War, in country from November 1, 1955 to May 7, 1975 or outside the country from August 5, 1964 to May 7, 1975. The award rests on knowledge and experience gained in service or other relevant lived experience, a family member may make a posthumous request, and MDVA and county veterans service officers may help districts verify discharge paperwork. The district may require evidence that the veteran was a Minnesota public school student or is a current Minnesota resident. Tracked because the duty is mandatory rather than an honorary award at a school board’s discretion, and because the eligible cohort is old enough that the posthumous route is the one most families will need.
▲Expands benefitsExempts honor guard pay, Guard active service pay and Public Health Service retired pay from the income tax.
Honor guard compensation is exempt from the 2026 tax year, Public Health Service commissioned corps retired pay is deductible from the 2026 tax year, and Guard pay for being ordered out for active service is exempt from the 2027 tax year.
▲Expands benefitsOpens the disabled veteran property tax exemption to any veteran under the federal definition, including the Space Force, rather than only the honorably discharged.
Amended Tax-Property section 7-208(a)(3) so that a disabled veteran is anyone who "is a veteran", meaning 38 U.S.C. 101 through State Government section 9-901, rather than someone "honorably discharged or released under honorable circumstances", and added space service throughout, with parallel changes to the local credits in sections 9-265 and 9-323 and to the job creation tax credit. Section 3 applies to taxable years beginning after June 30, 2026. Chapter 647 of the same session reenacted section 7-208(a) in its old words without amendments; the Code prints Chapter 689’s text. Approved May 26, 2026, effective July 1, 2026.
Rewrote Education section 18-601(f): each college determines eligibility, the Higher Education Commission allocates funds to each college by formula subject to the State budget, colleges award only within their allocation, and continuing recipients have priority. The 15-a-year limit on veterans qualifying at 25% in section 18-601(g)(2) is unchanged. Approved May 26, 2026, effective July 1, 2026.
▲Expands benefitsRaises the income ceiling for the optional local disabled veteran credit to $150,000 single and $300,000 joint.
Amended Tax-Property section 9-265, the credit a county or city may grant against local property tax, 50% at a rating of 75% or more for a veteran not in the 7-208 exemption and 25% at 50% to 74%, to replace the $100,000 federal adjusted gross income limit with $150,000 on an individual return and $300,000 on a joint return. Approved May 26, 2026, effective June 1, 2026, for taxable years beginning after June 30, 2026. The credit exists only where a local law adopts it.
▲Expands benefitsLets a county or city grant a local property tax credit to a surviving spouse who is not eligible for the state exemption.
Added Tax-Property section 9-267.1, letting Baltimore City, a county or a city grant by law a credit against local property tax on the dwelling of a surviving spouse, as section 7-208 defines one, who is ineligible for the 7-208 exemption, with the amount, duration and further conditions set locally. The introduced bill would have repealed the two-year acquisition window in section 7-208(b); the enacted act does not. Approved May 26, 2026, effective June 1, 2026, for taxable years beginning after June 30, 2026.
▲Expands benefitsCreated a Purple Heart plate for a recipient or surviving spouse with a $10 application fee and no annual display fee.
Added D.C. Code 50-1501.02o for a Purple Heart recipient or an unremarried surviving spouse, with a one-time $10 application fee, no annual display fee, and proof by DD-214 or DD-215, WD-AGO 53-55, orders, a certificate from a service secretary or general or flag officer, or other documents the DMV accepts after consulting the Office of Veterans Affairs. Fees go to the Office of Veterans Affairs Fund. The act also repealed 50-1501.02a(b)(4), which had required the DMV to copy every veteran plate application to the Office. Effective May 21, 2026.
Both amend S.C. Code 50-9-650(B)(2), the tag set issued with a resident hunting licence and big game permit, which lifetime and gratis licensees such as the disability combination licence holder receive. Act No. 231, signed May 19, 2026 and effective for that section on approval, gives three antlerless and three unrestricted antlered tags. Act No. 207, signed May 18, 2026 and effective January 2, 2027, gives three antlerless, two unrestricted antlered and one antler-restriction tag. Neither act mentions the other, so from January 2, 2027 the later-signed and the later-effective texts disagree about the sixth tag.
Sponsor
William M. "Bill" HixonRepublican, House, District 83
▲Expands benefitsCaps and conditions what anyone may charge a veteran for help with a VA benefits claim, with penalties for unauthorized fees.
Added Article 8 to Chapter 11, Title 25 at Sections 25-11-810, 25-11-820 and 25-11-840, and skipped 25-11-830 entirely. No person may receive compensation for preparing, advising, presenting or prosecuting a veterans benefits claim except as federal law permits; referral fees are barred except between licensed attorneys under a joint representation contract complying with the Rules of Professional Conduct; guaranteeing a specific benefit, level, percentage or amount is barred; upfront and nonrefundable fees are barred; any lawful fee must be in a written agreement signed before services, must be contingent on an increase in benefits awarded, and must not exceed five times the monthly increase or twelve thousand five hundred dollars, whichever is less, with any instalment plan interest free and no longer than twelve months. No compensation at all for a claim filed within the one-year presumptive period after release from active duty unless the veteran signs a waiver declining the free services available. A twelve-point font disclosure in prescribed words must be signed by the claimant and retained for a year after the relationship ends. Using a veteran’s own log-in credentials is prohibited, employing a medical provider to conduct a medical examination is prohibited, and anyone with access to veterans medical or financial information must pass an identity and criminal records check. Accredited representatives, agents and attorneys under 38 C.F.R. 14.629, attorneys handling VA medical care liens, and South Carolina veterans home employees are exempt. A violation is a misdemeanour with each benefits matter a separate offence, supports a South Carolina Unfair Trade Practices Act action, and can be enjoined by the Attorney General with civil penalties deposited into the Veterans’ Trust Fund. Tracked because the Code of Laws served by the Legislative Services Agency still ends Chapter 11 at Section 25-11-730, so the largest change to South Carolina veterans law in years is invisible to anyone reading the code rather than the ratified act, and because subsections (A) and (D) are in tension: (A) forbids any compensation federal law does not permit, while (D) prescribes a cap for a fee that (A) will usually forbid outside the accredited exemption.
Amended section 3(a) of Act 99 of 2024 so the Maui state veterans home is to be assimilated into a state agency with a Maui affiliation "as soon as practicable" rather than by June 30, 2027, citing logistical, labor and financial issues. The Maui home is a proposed facility; Hilo and Kapolei are the operating homes. Effective on approval in May 2026.
▲▼Expands and restrictsRe-enacted the disabled veteran credit but cut the covered homestead for new applicants to half an acre with no appurtenances.
Division XX of the 2026 property tax act struck Iowa Code section 425.1, subsection 2 and rewrote it so that the disabled veteran tax credit now sits at section 425.1, subsection 2, paragraph "b", then repealed section 425.15 outright at section 145. The four routes in, the full exemption of the entire amount of tax levied, the individual unemployability definition and the confidentiality provision all carried over. Two things changed. Section 425.1(2)(b)(6) provides that for an owner who applies before July 1, 2026 "homestead" keeps its section 425.11 meaning, and for an owner who applies on or after that date the homestead "shall not include appurtenances and shall not exceed one-half acre". The Iowa Department of Revenue states the prior measure as half an acre inside city limits and forty acres outside them, appurtenances included, so a rural claimant who files from July 1, 2026 loses the exemption on up to 39.5 acres and every outbuilding. Section 147 grandfathers owners who had already filed, without refiling. And section 425.1(2)(b)(3) now bars a claimant from the general homestead credit in paragraph "c" as well as from other veteran exemptions, where the old section 425.15, subsection 3 barred only the latter. Section 144 updated the lifetime trout fishing licence cross-reference in section 483A.24, subsection 20. Tracked and flagged because the Iowa Code edition published by the Legislative Services Agency was printed on December 9, 2025 and still serves section 425.15 as live law, so anyone reading the Code online reads a repealed section and cannot find the acreage limit; because the division applies retroactively to assessment years beginning on or after January 1, 2026; and because the July 1, 2026 filing cliff has already passed and cannot be recovered.
▼Restricts benefitsRepealed the National Guard college loan program.
A Commission on Higher Education cleanup act repealed S.C. Code 59-111-75, the National Guard college loan repayment programme closed to new participants from the 2007-2008 academic year, whose remaining funds had already moved to the College Assistance Program. Signed May 18, 2026 and effective on approval. The published code still prints the section.
Sponsor
Shannon S. EricksonRepublican, House, District 124
▲Expands benefitsAdds 180 days of service as a route to the fire and police hiring preference, which had required wartime service.
Before the amendment the five-point preference reached service "during times of war." The act adds "or for one hundred eighty days or more" as an alternative, so a peacetime veteran with six months of service who previously got nothing now gets the points. The Department of Veterans Affairs release described it as setting a 180-day minimum requirement, which reads as a new hurdle and has the effect backwards.
=No change to benefitsChanges who may serve on a county veteran affairs commission and as its director; no veteran benefit changes.
Rewrote Iowa Code section 35B.3 so that a county commission of veteran affairs member need no longer be a veteran under section 35.1. Three classes now qualify: a veteran as defined in section 35.1; an Iowa resident who is a current member of the Iowa national guard or an Iowa unit of the reserve forces "whose service is satisfactory according to a letter of recommendation from the commander of the person’s current unit"; and an Iowa resident who is a former member of either, discharged under honorable conditions as evidenced by a DD-214 or a commander’s letter. Subsection 2 was changed from requiring each member to be "a veteran of" a different military branch to requiring each to "have served in" a different branch. In the same act, section 35B.6, subsection 1, paragraph "a" was amended in the opposite direction: the executive director previously had to "possess the same qualifications as provided in section 35B.3 for commission members" and must now "be a veteran as defined in section 35.1", so the new guard and reserve routes open commissioner seats and do not open the executive director post. The pre-July 1, 1989 exemption for sitting executive directors is unchanged. Tracked because the act takes a single cross-reference in two directions at once, and the widening and the narrowing are easy to conflate.
▲Expands benefitsBars a county recorder from charging for the records a veteran needs to file a benefits claim.
Added to Iowa Code section 22.3, in the open records chapter, that "A county recorder shall not charge a fee for the examination and copying of public records necessary to complete and file claims for benefits with the Iowa department of veterans affairs or the United States department of veterans affairs." The practical effect is free copies of a discharge document recorded under section 331.608, which chapter 426A requires a veteran to have recorded with the county recorder before claiming the military service property tax exemption. Tracked because the waiver binds the county recorder only and not every records custodian, so a veteran needing a record from another county office or a state agency is outside it, and because the provision sits in the open records chapter rather than in any veterans chapter and will not be found by anyone reading chapter 35 or chapter 426A.
▲Expands benefitsOpens the war veteran's child tuition waiver to a child who has lived in South Carolina since birth.
Amended S.C. Code 59-111-20 to read in three subsections. Subsection (A) keeps the grant and turns the veteran residency test into four alternatives, adding a child who has been a resident of South Carolina since birth, whatever the veteran’s residence. Subsection (B) re-enacts the wartime service requirement and the nine qualifying events unchanged, including the "items (4) and (5)" wording of item (8). Subsection (C) re-enacts the Chapter 112 residency, age twenty-six and undergraduate limits. Signed May 15, 2026 and effective on approval. The published Code of Laws still prints the 2025 text, and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs page cites it as "Section 59-11-20".
▲Expands benefitsAdded an Operation Inherent Resolve plate and an Armed Forces Surviving Spouse plate.
Amended S.C. Code 56-3-14950(A) to add Operation Inherent Resolve as a ninth campaign plate on the ordinary campaign plate fee terms, and 56-3-14970(A) to add Armed Forces Surviving Spouse, available to the surviving spouse of a military veteran with no award or Guard condition. Each section takes effect six months after the Department of Motor Vehicles approves the plate design; the rest of the act, which adds a SAFE registration notation and autism to the handicapped definition in 56-3-1910(A), takes effect May 15, 2027. Signed May 15, 2026. The design approval date is not on the legislative record, so the start date is the department’s to state.
▲Expands benefitsUnfroze verification for veterans of the Secret War in Laos and widened their state benefits.
Struck the sentence in Minn. Stat. 197.448, subd. 2(b) that forbade the commissioner of veterans affairs from accepting verification applications until the legislature enacted criteria and a protocol, which had left the route for unnaturalized special guerrilla unit and irregular forces claimants dormant since the section was created in 2025. New subdivisions 3 and 4 hang verification on the applicant filing a VA preneed determination of eligibility for burial in a national cemetery, and create a special consideration route for anyone VA refuses, accepting chain-of-command affidavits, two affidavits from men who served alongside the applicant, wartime photographs, newspaper articles, and membership certificates from named Lao and Hmong veterans organisations. The benefits list gained sections 43A.09, 43A.11, 43A.111, 197.46, 197.48 and 197.481, and lost sections 197.65 and 197.987 without relocating them. Section 1 adds an SGU Veteran designation to the driver’s licence and state ID effective January 1, 2027. The same act rewrote state veterans cemetery eligibility, replaced the $130-a-day state active service pay floor with E-5 basic pay, repealed the 5 percent pension stipend in 192.49, subd. 2, and let the commissioner temporarily close a veterans home on a federal termination notice. Tracked because published guidance still describes the $130 floor and the 5 percent stipend as current, and because the dormant-to-live change in 197.448 is invisible from the statute text alone.
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