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catalog has entries whose figures move when a bill passes, whose act takes effect on a later date, or whose program is repealed while its agency keeps advertising it.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.
5 instruments in South Carolina. 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.
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 benefitsWould have let a disabled veteran without a total rating claim a share of the home and vehicle exemption equal to the rating.
Would have amended Section 12-37-220 so that a veteran who meets every requirement except being permanently and totally disabled is eligible for a percentage of the house exemption equal to the percentage of the service-connected disability, and likewise for a percentage of the two-vehicle exemption, first applying to property tax years beginning after 2025. Prefiled December 16, 2025, introduced January 13, 2026, referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means, and never reported out. Two companion proposals in the same session went the same way: H. 4600 would have exempted owner-occupied residential property of a veteran with a service-connected disability from county, municipal, school and special assessment real estate taxes in the percentage of the disability, and H. 4595 would have exempted one hundred percent of the fair market value of a primary residence of a person over sixty-five or a fully disabled veteran where the residence carries no mortgage lien. Tracked under the rule for a bill that never passed because published veteran benefit guides are currently describing South Carolina as offering a partial exemption scaled to the rating, one of them with a fabricated figure of a twenty-eight thousand eight hundred eighty-six dollar assessed value exemption at a forty percent rating, indexed annually. No partial or percentage veteran exemption exists in South Carolina law. The exemption in Section 12-37-220(B)(1) is all or nothing and turns on the inability to perform substantial gainful employment.
=No change to benefitsLimits how often the state inspects county veterans offices; no veteran benefit changes.
Added S.C. Code 25-11-50(B): the secretary evaluates each county veterans’ affairs office no more than twice a year, the department reevaluates deficiencies within six months and may help with a corrective action plan, the final inspection is reported in writing to the legislative delegation and county administrator within ninety days, and "the secretary or his designee shall not have the authority to remove a county officer for any reason". Section 25-11-40(B) was not amended and still makes the officer removable for cause by the secretary. Signed May 12, 2025. Flagged because the two sentences stand in the same chapter and nothing reconciles them.
▲Expands benefitsLets a totally disabled veteran or surviving spouse claim the property tax exemption for the whole year the disability occurs.
Added Section 12-37-610(B). A permanently and totally disabled veteran who files the county service officer certificate may immediately claim the exemption for the entire year in which the disability occurs; a surviving spouse may do the same regardless of whether the veteran ever applied, filed for or claimed it; and a veteran permanently and totally disabled for any part of the year, or that veteran’s surviving spouse, is entitled to the exemption for the entire year. Where the veteran owned the property for less than a year, any other owner who is not a disabled veteran is responsible for the tax accrued while they owned it. The same act amended Section 12-37-220, which is where the current definitions of eligible owner, permanently and totally disabled, qualified surviving spouse and house sit, including the definition that keys the exemption to the four percent legal residence classification under Section 12-43-220(c) rather than to a standalone five-acre limit. Tracked for a live conflict about how far back it reaches: Section 4 of the act says it applies to tax years beginning after 2023 and any open period less than three years, while the Department of Veterans’ Affairs announcement of the act says the exemption is retroactive to 2022. Those are different claims and a refund argument turns on which one a county applies.
Repealed Sections 56-3-1110 to 56-3-1130 (wartime disabled veteran plates and free registration), Section 56-3-1150 (former prisoners of war), Section 56-3-1750 (military reserve), Sections 56-3-1850 and 56-3-1855 (Medal of Honor plates and parking), Section 56-3-3310 (Purple Heart), the World War II veterans section and the Gold Star Family section, and created Article 149 of Chapter 3, Title 56 at Sections 56-3-14910 to 56-3-15000 in their place. The new article sorts plates into six tiers and the tier decides the money and the parking: valorous awards, distinguished service awards and exemplary service awards are exempt from the registration fee and carry an exemption from metered and timed parking fees and fines, while the service-connected disability section at 56-3-14940 is exempt from the fee but has no parking subsection at all. Campaign plates pay the ordinary registration fee except the Korean War plate. 2022 Act No. 216 converted the disabled veteran plates from fee-bearing to fee-exempt retroactive to May 6, 2022 and ordered the Department of Motor Vehicles to refund fees collected in the interim, added US Space Force, added the Meritorious Service Medal and Support Our Troops, and corrected the section numbers in the surviving spouse provision. 2024 Act No. 178 added the Navy and Marine Corps Medal and extended the surviving spouse right to the three National Guard designations. Flagged because two live statutes still point at the repealed sections: Section 12-37-220(B)(3) conditions the vehicle property tax exemption on plates issued under Sections 56-3-1110 to 56-3-1130, and Section 56-3-1910(I) defines who gets a free handicapped plate by reference to a disabled veteran under Section 56-3-1110. Also flagged because the free municipal parking that published guides attach to a disabled veteran plate is not in Section 56-3-14940; it came from the older Section 56-5-2585, which 2026 Act No. 115 repeals from October 6, 2026.
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.