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catalog has entries whose figures move when a bill passes, whose act takes effect on a later date, or whose program is repealed while its agency keeps advertising it.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.
10 instruments in Rhode Island. 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.
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 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.
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 benefitsLets Middletown reach veterans of any service dates and raises its prisoner of war floor above the statewide $15,000.
Amended R.I. Gen. Laws 44-3-4 so the Middletown town council may by ordinance grant a tax credit or exemption to any honorably discharged veteran regardless of service dates, an additional credit or exemption for a 100 percent service-connected disabled veteran (replacing the $5,000 the section had given Middletown for the totally disabled), a credit or exemption for specially adapted housing, and a prisoner of war exemption above $25,000 or an equivalent credit. Effective on passage.
Amended the North Kingstown clause of R.I. Gen. Laws 44-3-4(a)(1) so the veterans exemption there is a $200 tax credit or its equivalent in assessment dollars rather than $10,000 of value, and turned the town’s Gold Star, blind and elderly exemptions into credits too. Effective July 1, 2025. Until October 7, 2026 this entry had the change backwards.
▲Expands benefitsAdds the Space Force to the veterans home, burial at public expense and the veterans assistance fund.
Sections 9, 11 and 12 inserted the Space Force into the list of services in 30-17.1-1, 30-24-1, 30-24-10 and 30-25-3, so a Space Force veteran reaches the Bristol home, the veterans assistance fund and burial at public expense on the same terms as the older services. The veterans memorial cemetery provision at 30-25-14 already named it. Worth tracking because a Space Force veteran reading a pre-2025 summary of Rhode Island benefits will find their service missing from the statutory lists.
▲Expands benefitsWaives the public animal shelter adoption fee for a veteran with the veteran designation on a license or ID card.
Added 4-19-23, barring a public animal shelter from charging a dog or cat adoption fee to a person presenting a current and valid driver’s license or identification card with the word veteran on its face under 31-10-48. The shelter may limit it to one animal every six months. It is well drafted for a small benefit because it keys off a document the veteran already holds rather than creating a new certification, and it is the clearest example of Rhode Island building benefits on top of the license designation.
▲Expands benefitsLets a taxpayer subtract military service pension benefits from Rhode Island taxable income.
Added the modification for military service pensions at 44-30-12(c)(11), letting a taxpayer subtract military service pension benefits from federal adjusted gross income for tax years beginning January 1, 2023. Unlike every other retirement modification in the section it carries no income cap, no age test and no dollar ceiling. Two drafting choices need care: the definition of military service is borrowed from a Railroad Retirement Board regulation at 20 C.F.R. 212.2 rather than from Title 38, and subsection (c)(11)(iii) caps the modification alone or together with the general retirement modification at the amount of the military pension received. Guidance written before mid-2022 correctly describes Rhode Island as taxing military retirement in full.
Both acts amended subdivision (a)(1)(x) of 44-3-4, the Smithfield veterans property tax exemption. Chapter 168 sets it at $10,000. Chapter 179 sets it at $4,000 and adds that from July 1, 2016 the town council may provide up to $10,000. Neither repealed the other and the statute still prints both versions of the same subdivision, each with its own bracketed note. This is tracked because the catalog cannot state a single Smithfield figure from the statute, and because it is the clearest illustration of why every Rhode Island property tax figure has to be confirmed with the local assessor.
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.