Disabled Veteran Benefits in Illinois

The Standard Homestead Exemption for Veterans with Disabilities is built on three steps. A rating of 30% but under 50% takes $2,500 off your home's equalized assessed value (EAV). 50% but under 70% takes off $5,000. At 70% or more, the first $250,000 of EAV is exempt. The steps start at 30%.

It applies to your primary residence, and the rating has to be one you are paid compensation for. The application is Form PTAX-342, made with your county during its application period, and state law has you reapply every year. The exception is a veteran rated 100% and permanently and totally disabled, who no longer has to reapply. A surviving spouse who holds title to the home, lives there and does not remarry keeps the exemption.

Two smaller breaks sit beside it. A veteran returning from active duty in an armed conflict gets $5,000 off the EAV of their principal residence for two tax years in a row. And housing bought or built as specially adapted housing with federal funds can be exempt on up to $100,000 of assessed value.

There are two different plates and people mix them up. If your rating is 50% or greater, the Secretary of State issues one set of military series plates with no registration fee, for a car, a motorcycle or a truck weighing no more than 8,000 pounds. The annual renewal on that first set is $0. A second set costs the normal $151 registration fee.

The Disabled Veteran plate, the one that lets you park in spaces reserved for persons with disabilities, works differently. It is not tied to an overall percentage. You need a service-connected disability and a licensed physician's certification that it qualifies you for a disabled plate, and the state asks for at least a 10% service-connected walking disability that matches the diagnosis on that certification.

"Free" has limits. On a newly acquired vehicle you still pay the $165 title fee, and electric vehicles carry an additional $100 registration fee.

People search for this a lot, and the honest answer is no. The Toll Highway Act says no person may use a toll highway without paying the toll. The exceptions it lists are official Tollway business, emergency vehicles and certain public buses. Veterans are not on the list, and a Disabled Veteran plate does not change that.

So you pay tolls like everyone else, whatever your rating.

The dependents' benefit is the big one. The Deceased, Disabled, and MIA/POW Veterans' Dependents Scholarship pays full tuition and mandatory fees at any Illinois state-supported college or university for the equivalent of 4 years, counted as 120 points. It is open to the spouse and children of a veteran the VA rates 100% permanent and totally disabled, and the state says in terms that a 100% permanent and total rating due to unemployability qualifies.

There is a residency test on the veteran. You must have been an Illinois resident when you entered service or within six months after, or have lived in Illinois for 15 consecutive years since. Younger children are covered too: the same rating brings a $250 grant every year for each child aged 10 to 18 in school.

For the veteran, the Illinois Veterans' Grant pays tuition and mandatory fees at every state-supported college, university and community college. It asks for an honorable discharge, at least one full year of active duty and Illinois residency, not a disability rating.

The bar for hunting and fishing is low. A veteran the VA certifies as at least 10% disabled from service-related causes, or who receives a total disability pension, may fish without a license and may hunt and trap without a hunting license, a State Habitat Stamp or a State Waterfowl Stamp. The law's one condition is that your disability does not stop you doing it safely. You carry a Disability Affidavit card from the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs, issued by a Veteran Service Officer against your DD214 and current proof of VA compensation.

Camping is stricter. Illinois residents are exempt from all camping and admission fees in Department of Natural Resources parks if they have a permanent service-connected disability rated 100%, have permanently lost the use of an arm or a leg, or cannot move without crutches or a wheelchair. Former prisoners of war get the same.

Illinois resident veterans who served abroad, and Guard or Reserve members who were mobilized, can also buy fishing, hunting and sportsmen's combination licenses at one-half the fee. That one does not depend on a rating.

The Department of Revenue lets you subtract the federally taxed income you receive from a government retirement and government disability plan, including military plans, on Form IL-1040, Line 5. The same line covers Social Security benefits.

Pay for service is treated the same way. In the department's own words, Illinois does not tax military pay earned by service persons. That covers duty in the armed forces, the Reserves and a National Guard unit, and you take the subtraction on Schedule M.

The benefits on this page turn on a handful of ratings. Any service-connected rating earns 10 preference points on state job applications. 10% opens hunting and fishing with no license. 30% starts the property tax reduction. 50% brings plates with no registration fee and the $5,000 reduction, and that is where 60% sits.

70% is the big step: the first $250,000 of your home's assessed value becomes exempt. 80% and 90% fall in the same 70%-or-more band of the property tax law, and none of the benefits above has a step of its own at either.

100% permanent and total adds three things: no more yearly reapplication for the property tax exemption, four years of tuition for your spouse and children, and no state park camping or admission fees.