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catalog has entries whose figures move when a bill passes, whose act takes effect on a later date, or whose program is repealed while its agency keeps advertising it.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.
7 instruments in Iowa. 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.
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 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2 and rewrote it so that the disabled veteran tax credit now sits at section 425.1, subsection 2, paragraph "b", then repealed section 425.15 outright at section 145.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.
=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 benefitsCreated a last-dollar tuition and mandatory fee waiver at the Regents universities for a veteran rated 100 percent.
Added a new subsection 43 to Iowa Code section 262.9 directing the state board of regents to have the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa waive all tuition and mandatory fees for a veteran, as defined in section 35.1, with a permanent service-connected disability rating of one hundred percent as certified by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs who applies to and is admitted for enrollment. Paragraph "b" then conditions it: the veteran is eligible only if "not eligible for or has exhausted any other available federal or state sources of financial assistance for such tuition and fees, including but not limited to the Pell grant program and education benefits from the United States department of veterans affairs", and the institution prorates the waiver each semester to cover only the difference between other federal and state assistance obtained and the tuition and fees. Tracked and flagged for two reasons. First, the last-dollar condition means a veteran holding unexhausted Post-9/11 GI Bill entitlement is not eligible, so the benefit will be described as free tuition for every 100 percent disabled Iowa veteran and is not. Second, the subsection has no individual unemployability route, while the Iowa disabled veteran homestead tax credit expressly reaches a permanent and total rating based on individual unemployability paid at the 100 percent rate, so a veteran VA pays at the 100 percent rate through unemployability gets the property tax credit and does not, on these words, get the tuition waiver.
▲Expands benefitsCreated an additional any-sex deer license for a resident disabled veteran and tripled the nonresident disabled hunter allocation.
Added Iowa Code section 483A.8D, under which a disabled veteran who is a resident may be issued one any sex deer hunting licence to hunt during any established firearm deer hunting season, using the method of take authorized for that season, and may obtain it "in addition to any other deer hunting license for which the person is eligible". The section defines disabled veteran for itself as a person who served on federal active duty "and who was disabled during the veteran’s military service, as verified by the department of veterans affairs", with no rating requirement, which is a third and looser disability test alongside the "entitled to a service connected rating under 38 U.S.C. ch. 11" test in section 483A.24, subsections 16 and 17 and the thirty percent test in section 483A.24, subsection 5. The act also raised the nonresident wild turkey hunting licences the director must provide from seventy-five to one hundred twenty-five and increased the share allocated to the disabled veteran and disabled service member hunts under subsection 5 from twenty-five to seventy-five. Tracked because an any-sex tag is the scarce Iowa deer licence, because the entitlement is additional rather than substitutive, and because the new definition means a veteran refused under one Iowa outdoor provision may still qualify under this one.
▲▼Expands and restrictsRaised the military service exemption to $4,000 of taxable value and ended the state appropriation that funded the chapter after fiscal year 2023-2024.
Raised the military service tax exemption in Iowa Code section 426A.11, subsection 2 from $1,852 to $4,000 of taxable value for assessment years beginning on or after January 1, 2023, and left the World War I tier in subsection 1 applicable only to assessment years beginning before that date, with no replacement, making it a dead tier. At the same time it limited both section 426A.1A, the standing appropriation of "the amounts necessary to fund the credits provided under this chapter", and section 426A.2, the credit of up to $6.92 per thousand dollars of assessed value, to "each fiscal year beginning before July 1, 2024". The Iowa Department of Revenue states the consequence: "Starting in fiscal years beginning on or after July 1, 2024, this exemption is no longer funded by the state." The exemption itself is untouched and should still be claimed. Tracked because the chapter is still titled "Military service tax credit and exemptions" while the credit half no longer operates, because the revenue that used to be backfilled from the general fund now simply is not collected and the cost shifts onto the rest of the local tax base, and because the $4,000 is subtracted from taxable value after the assessment limitation rather than from a tax bill, so the annual saving is $4,000 times the local consolidated levy rather than $4,000.
A bill moves when the people who vote on it hear from the people it affects. Enter your address to see who represents you in Congress and in your state legislature, and where to get free, accredited help with a VA claim: your county veterans service officer or town veterans’ agent, and your state’s service offices.