Disabled Veteran Benefits in South Dakota

The main exemption takes $200,000 off the value of your home before tax is figured. The veteran must be rated as permanently and totally disabled from a service-connected disability, and must own and live in the home. The property is the same one that qualifies for the owner-occupied classification. The law names no percentage: the test is a permanent and total rating.

Apply at your county assessor's office by November 1. Once the county approves it, you keep the exemption until the home is sold, you stop living in it, or its use changes. If you missed the deadline only because your claim for a permanent and total rating was still pending with the VA, the county must refund the difference back to the effective date of the claim, for up to four years.

A surviving spouse gets the same $200,000 exemption on a home they own and live in if the veteran was rated permanently and totally disabled, or if the spouse receives DIC for a service-connected death. It ends if the spouse remarries. A separate, fuller exemption covers a paraplegic veteran or one with loss of use of both lower extremities: the home is exempt from all property taxes, but only if it is specifically designed for wheelchair use and you own and live in it for the full calendar year the tax is levied.

The Department of Revenue says South Dakota is one of seven states that does not impose a state income tax. That applies to everyone, so there is no separate military retirement exemption to claim.

The state also has no inheritance tax and no estate tax.

Upload either a K award or a VA letter showing 100% total service-connected disability. You also need to be a South Dakota resident. Prisoners of war and Purple Heart recipients qualify with their own documents.

The lifetime license is a billfold card that gets you free vehicle entry at the park gate. It also gives a 50% discount on camping fees and the electrical service fees for campsites and camping cabins. Apply online in Go Outdoors South Dakota and upload your documents. The state says you will hear about your application within two weeks.

Game, Fish and Parks offers a reduced-fee hunting and fishing license to residents who show a VA letter with the K award or a veterans allotment for a 40% or greater service-connected disability. State law says what you receive is a resident small game license and a resident fishing license, valid for four years. Mail the application, proof and $10 fee to the Fort Pierre office.

There is also a special pheasant hunt. Any nonprofit organization can set one up for disabled veterans and Purple Heart recipients, and the bar for these is lower: a 20% or more service-connected disability, or the K award. No fee may be charged to participants, and the permits are valid on private ground only.

The Disabled Veteran plate is for a resident veteran who receives a VA K award, an automobile under Public Law 187, a statutory benefit for loss or loss of use of one or more extremities, or a veterans allotment for total disability. The injury has to have been incurred in active duty in wartime or in a mission involving armed conflict.

You pay $10 a year for the plate and no registration fee, plus a $12 mailing fee. The plate is available for passenger vehicles and motorcycles. The state verifies your status through the VA in Sioux Falls and refunds the $10 if you do not qualify.

Any honorably discharged veteran who served on active duty can get an ordinary veteran plate. That one costs the normal registration fee plus an initial $10.

The free tuition law covers undergraduate courses at state-supported universities and technical colleges. You must have an honorable discharge and be a South Dakota resident who qualifies for in-state tuition. You earn one month of free tuition per month of qualifying service, from a minimum of one up to a maximum of four academic years. Qualifying service is your active duty time within the period of conflict or hostilities that earned you eligibility.

The law does not apply if you are eligible for GI Bill or other federal education payments. Send the completed application and a copy of your DD-214 to the state Department of Veterans Affairs in Pierre.

Families get their own help. Children under 25 whose parent was killed in action or died on active duty get free tuition at state-supported schools, if the parent was a South Dakota resident for at least six months before entering service. The spouse and children of a prisoner of war or a person missing in action can attend without tuition or mandatory fees, unless they are eligible for equal or greater federal benefits.

At the South Dakota Veterans Cemetery the veteran's cost is $0 for every burial option, which includes the gravesite or niche, grave liner, headstone and perpetual care. A spouse's cost is $1,002.

The state also pays up to $100 toward burial and funeral expenses for an honorably discharged veteran, or a veteran's wife, widow or widower, when the estate or family lacks the funds. The veteran must have been a South Dakota resident for one year before entering service or one year before death. Your county or tribal veterans service officer files the claim within a year of the burial. For a government headstone or marker the state pays $200 toward setting it, under the same residency rule, or $100 toward etching the veteran's military information on a privately bought headstone.