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catalog has entries whose figures move when a bill passes, whose act takes effect on a later date, or whose program is repealed while its agency keeps advertising it.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.
11 instruments in Tennessee. 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 benefitsLets the state veterans homes provide care beyond skilled nursing.
Added Tenn. Code 58-7-101(e): in addition to skilled nursing, each state veterans home may provide and receive payment for other services for the support and care of honorably discharged veterans, and widened the board’s siting and contracting powers to cover facilities and services. Signed May 13, 2026, effective on becoming law. The honorable discharge requirement Attorney General Opinion 20-13 reads strictly is repeated in the new subsection.
▲Expands benefitsCreated a free sportsman license for Tennessee National Guard members.
Added to Tenn. Code 70-2-201 and 70-2-104 a no-cost sportsman license, with the privileges of the resident annual sportsman license, for a Tennessee National Guard member in good standing, verified by military identification and adjutant general membership data, paid from the general fund. Signed April 27, 2026, effective July 1, 2026.
▲Expands benefitsOpened state veterans cemetery burial to Guard and reserve members with eight years of service or state call-ups.
Deleted and replaced 46-6-105 and 46-6-107. Interment is now open to anyone meeting 38 U.S.C. 2402, or to a member of a reserve component, the Army National Guard or the Air National Guard who was discharged or released under honorable conditions and either served honorably for not less than eight years collectively or was called up on state orders irrespective of time served. A Guard member activated by the Governor for a single emergency is eligible on the call-up alone. The act also listed the documents the department must accept, including NGB Form 22 and NGB Forms 438 and 439, so a Guard member who holds no DD214 has a route, and rewrote the fee section to bar any charge for the eligible member, the most recent spouse, and a minor or dependent incapacitated child. Passed April 13, 2026 and effective on becoming law. Tracked because it moved the line in the opposite direction from the state veterans homes, which under Attorney General Opinion 20-13 still exclude a general discharge under honorable conditions.
▲Expands benefitsWould have raised the disabled veteran property tax relief from the first $175,000 of market value to the first $200,000.
Filed January 20, 2026 to raise the property value on which disabled veteran relief is paid from $175,000 to $200,000. It was recommended for passage by the Senate State and Local Government Committee nine votes to nothing on March 10, 2026 and referred to Senate Finance, Ways and Means, where it was placed on the calendar three times in April 2026. The bill record shows no floor vote in either chamber and no public chapter. It is not law and the cap is still $175,000, which is what the statute says and what the Comptroller’s 2026 brochure prints. Tracked under the exception for bills that died, because it is being reported as current law: multiple guides state that the cap rises to $200,000 effective July 1, 2026 and advise veterans filing for the 2026 tax year to use the higher figure. A veteran who claims on $200,000 is claiming on a bill.
▲Expands benefitsRaised the STRONG Act cap from 120 to 130 hours and pays full resident tuition plus fees.
Amended Tenn. Code 49-4-1003 to 49-4-1005. The bachelor’s degree cap moved from 120 to 130 semester hours and the alternative eight-semester limit was deleted; the Department of Military pays one hundred percent of the maximum resident in-state tuition plus course or master’s program fees set by its published policy, less other aid; and a member suspended from federal tuition assistance for academic performance or recoupment is ineligible. Signed May 2, 2025, effective on becoming law. The Military Department’s state tuition assistance page still prints the old 120 hours.
▲Expands benefitsMeasures the twenty days of paid military leave by each employee's scheduled shift, so a long-shift worker keeps full shifts.
Added to Tenn. Code 8-33-101 a definition of "working day" as the number of hours an employee is scheduled to work in a twenty-four-hour period, which measures the twenty working days of paid military leave in 8-33-109 for state and local employees by each employee’s own scheduled shift. Signed April 24, 2025, effective on becoming law.
▲Expands benefitsLets a disabled veteran get a free parking placard in place of the plate, or a placard alongside it for the regular fee.
Rewrote Tenn. Code 55-21-106(h) and (i). A veteran who qualifies for the free disabled veteran plate under 55-4-256 may take a free distinguishing placard instead, or buy one in addition for the ordinary passenger registration fee, and the placard may be used in lieu of any distinguishing plate for parking. "Certificate" in 55-21-106 now expressly includes the 55-4-256 plate and the placard, so both carry the subsection (b) parking courtesy. Signed March 25, 2025 and effective July 1, 2026. The catalog had said the plate carried no parking privilege.
▲Expands benefitsKeeps a disabled veteran's property tax relief while the veteran is temporarily relocated for health care.
Section 3 added subsections to 67-5-704 providing that a disabled veteran continues to qualify for property tax relief while temporarily relocated for health care to the home of a friend or relative, or to a hospital or skilled or intermediate care facility, if the veteran indicates an intent to return when recovered sufficiently; that the residence is determined by the principles of 2-2-122, the election-law residence provision; and that veterans whose reimbursement ceased for that reason between October 3, 2017 and the effective date are paid retroactively. Sections 1 and 2 did the same for the elderly and disabled homeowner programs. The same section added the definition that does the most work in the chapter: as used in 67-5-704, "disabled veteran" includes the veteran’s otherwise qualified surviving spouse, which carries every protection in the section across to the spouse. Tracked because guidance written before April 2018 describes a veteran who enters a nursing facility as losing the relief.
▲Expands benefitsRestored the disabled veteran property tax relief to the first $175,000 of market value.
Section 37 of the IMPROVE Act, the 2017 Tax Cut Act, amended 67-5-704 by deleting "one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000)" wherever it appeared and substituting "one hundred seventy-five thousand dollars ($175,000)". Section 38 gave named sections immediate effect and put all others, including section 37, at July 1, 2017. This is the act that set the figure Tennessee uses today, and almost nobody looking for it would find it, because the bill is known as the gas tax bill and its subject is fuel taxes, vehicle registration and the sales tax on food. Every standalone veterans bill filed in the same General Assembly to do the same thing died: House Bill 5 and Senate Bill 25 were taken off notice in the Local Government Subcommittee on January 17, 2018, and House Bill 176 and Senate Bill 254 met the same end the same day. A House amendment to this bill covering the elderly program was withdrawn on April 19, 2017, so the restoration reached the floor through the bill text rather than an amendment. Tracked because a reader tracing the $175,000 through veterans legislation will find only failures.
▲Expands benefitsRepealed the income limit on the disabled veteran property tax relief.
One sentence of operative text: section 1 amended 67-5-704 by deleting subdivision (a)(2) and the accompanying subsection, which was the entire sixty thousand dollar income limit added the previous year. The disabled veteran program has had no income test since. Sections 2 and 3 raised the 67-5-702 and 67-5-703 figures from $23,000 to $23,500. Notably the act did not touch the market value cap, which stayed at the $100,000 that Public Chapter 481 had set, so between this act and July 2017 a disabled veteran faced no income limit and a $100,000 cap. Tracked because the Tennessee Department of Veterans Services still points readers to "Public Chapter No. 1065" for program changes, which is correct as to the income limit and silent as to the figure that moved afterward.
▼Restricts benefitsCut the market value covered by the disabled veteran property tax relief from $175,000 to $100,000 and added an income limit.
Titled the "Save the Tax Relief Act." Section 5 deleted "one hundred seventy-five thousand dollars ($175,000)" wherever it appeared in 67-5-704(a) and substituted "one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000)", cutting the covered market value for disabled veterans and their surviving spouses by forty-three percent. Section 4 added a new subdivision (a)(2) capping the taxpayer’s annual income from all sources at sixty thousand dollars, indexed to the social security cost of living adjustment, counting the income of all owners, the spouse and any owner of a remainder or reversion. The income limit was grandfathered: it applied only to taxpayers who had not received a reimbursement for tax year 2014, so a continuing recipient kept relief regardless of income, while the cut to $100,000 carried no grandfather and reached everyone. Section 6 required new applicants to document income. Tracked because it is the origin of every wrong Tennessee figure still in circulation, and because the income limit it created is still described as current by sources that did not follow what happened next.
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.