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catalog has entries whose figures move when a bill passes, whose act takes effect on a later date, or whose program is repealed while its agency keeps advertising it.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.
9 instruments in Minnesota. 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.
=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 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.
▲▼Expands and restrictsWidened the survivor education waiver to fees and Tribal colleges, but repealed the POW/MIA section and the veteran's own $750 grant.
Rebuilt Minn. Stat. 197.75. The waiver at Minnesota public postsecondary institutions now covers tuition and fees rather than tuition alone, and eligible institutions now include Tribally controlled colleges. The residency test for a deceased veteran, which had required Minnesota residence within six months of entering service or for the six months before death, was removed. Section 197.752 was repealed outright and prisoner of war and missing in action families were folded into 197.75, replacing a $250-a-year private institution payment frozen since the 1970s with the full package, and the rule that a change of circumstance including the return or reported death of the POW or MIA does not remove eligibility was carried across. The one-time $750 payment to a veteran who had exhausted federal educational benefits was deleted along with the whole “eligible veteran” definition. The stipend is now awarded on a funds-available basis, and section 197.75 was added to the Minnesota GI Bill appropriation in 197.791, subd. 8 without raising its $6,000,000 annual ceiling. Tracked because every published description of Minnesota veteran education assistance still lists the $750 veteran grant, and because adding a programme to a capped appropriation without raising the cap changes what the other programme can pay.
▼Restricts benefitsBars state veterans benefits to anyone whose federal benefits VA has declared forfeited.
Enacted Minn. Stat. 197.792, providing that a veteran as defined in 197.447, or a former member of the armed forces, does not qualify for state-funded veterans benefits, services or programmes under chapters 196 to 198 where VA has determined the individual forfeited entitlement to federal benefits under 38 U.S.C. chapter 61. This is a new cross-cutting disqualification reaching the veterans homes, the State Soldiers Assistance Program, the Minnesota GI Bill, the survivor education benefit and the state cemeteries at once, and it appears in none of the individual programme statutes. The same act repealed sections 196.19, 196.21, 196.22 subds. 1, 2, 3 and 5, 196.23 to 196.26 and 197.225, ending the environmental hazards information and assistance programme and the list of deceased military personnel, and added a deputy commissioner for administration. Tracked because a gate written into one new section and nowhere else is the kind a county veterans service officer will not see when reading the programme statute.
▲Expands benefitsCreates reduced-fee hunting and fishing licenses for veterans rated 50 to 99 percent.
Added Minn. Stat. 97A.465, subd. 9, requiring a licence agent to issue deer, small game and angling licences at the reduced fee specified in 97A.475 to a resident veteran with a 50 to 99 percent service-connected disability. The Revisor’s note on the section records the effective date as March 1, 2027. Until then Minnesota’s free hunting and fishing licences remain available only at 100 percent, and there is nothing at all between the free state park permit, which takes any level of service-connected disability, and the 100 percent licences. Tracked because a veteran at 70 percent reading the current statute will find a subdivision that describes a benefit they cannot yet obtain, which is the failure mode this tracker exists for.
▲Expands benefitsRemoved the 2011 death-date cutoff and the deadline on the surviving spouse market value exclusion.
Amended Minn. Stat. 273.13, subd. 34(k), effective beginning with assessment year 2023. Struck the words “dying after December 31, 2011”, so there is no longer any cutoff on when the veteran died; added “or the exclusion under paragraph (b), clause (2), did not exist at the time of the veteran’s death”; and struck the requirement that the spouse file a first-time application within two years of the death or by June 1, 2019, whichever was later, leaving that route with no deadline at all. Added paragraph (o), letting a spouse whose exclusion had expired before taxes payable in 2020 reapply. Tracked because the Department of Defense benefits library still lists “Veteran died after December 31, 2011” as a condition of a Minnesota surviving spouse’s eligibility, which would turn away exactly the spouses paragraph (k) was widened to reach.
▲Expands benefitsCreated vehicle registration, title, sales tax and license fee exemptions for a totally disabled veteran.
Added Minn. Stat. 171.01, subd. 51, defining a veteran with a total service-connected disability as a veteran under 197.447 with satisfactory evidence of a 100 percent total and permanent service-connected rating, and built four exemptions on it: 168.012, subd. 13 (registration tax, administrative fees, filing fees and surcharges, plate and validation sticker fees, on up to two vehicles at a time, jointly registrable with a spouse or domestic partner, excluding personalised plate fees and special plate contributions); 168A.29, subd. 4 (certificate of title fee); 171.06, subd. 2c (all driver’s licence, endorsement, filing and identification card fees); and 297B.03, clause (16) (motor vehicle sales tax), the last effective for sales and purchases made after June 30, 2024. Tracked for two reasons. The definition names only a 100 percent total and permanent rating and does not mention individual unemployability, while published guidance treats a TDIU award letter as acceptable evidence. And clause (16) contains no vehicle count and no lifetime cap, although secondary descriptions of the exemption commonly state a one-vehicle limit.
▲Expands benefitsRemoved the eight-year limit on the surviving spouse market value exclusion and made it portable.
Amended Minn. Stat. 273.13, subd. 34(c), effective beginning with assessments in 2021. The carryover of the $300,000 exclusion to the spouse of a veteran who held the total and permanent tier had run for the current taxes payable year plus eight additional taxes payable years. The eight-year cap was struck, so the exclusion now runs until the spouse remarries or disposes of the property. The same section added paragraph (n), allowing a spouse who no longer holds title to move the exclusion once to another property of equal or lower estimated market value measured on the date of the sale. Tracked because sources describing a five-year or eight-year run for a Minnesota surviving spouse, including fact sheets still served by the Department of Revenue from earlier years, would tell a spouse their benefit had ended when it had not.
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.