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By Greg Childress
NC Newsline

North Carolina’s property tax homestead exclusion for disabled veterans would increase from $45,000 to $61,000 under a bill approved Tuesday in the House Homeland Security and Military and Veterans Affairs Committee.
Currently, the first $45,000 of a disabled veterans’ assessed value of a permanent residence is exempt from property taxes. That amount was set a decade ago. Bill supporters said the increase to $61,000 is needed to offset cost-of-living increases over the last 10 years.
“All that this bill is doing now is, we took an average of three calculations of the cost-of-living change from the time this bill was passed until now,” said Rep. Grant Campbell, a Republican from Kannapolis, who is one of the bill’s sponsors.
The original version of HB 118 tied the tax exclusion to a veteran’s disability rating as determined by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Campbell said that would have caused financial hardships for counties and local municipalities.
In 2023, approximately 218,201 veterans in North Carolina had a service-connected disability rating, with 121,152 rated at 70% or higher, according to Carolina Demography, a nonpartisan team of scientists at the Carolina Population Center at UNC-Chapel Hill.
The original bill had a financial impact to counties and local municipalities of about $230 million per year, Campbell said. The new version will have a $10 million impact, he said.
“The original bill was a little bit more wider net that we threw but we have to be responsible about what we pass and the burden it will pass on to municipalities’ and counties’ revenue,” Campbell said.
Joy Hicks, director of advocacy and policy for the N.C. Association of County Commissioners, thanked Campbell for the changes on behalf of state county commissioners.
“This is a very worthy group that is in current law with an exemption and our county commissioners feel strongly that they want to support disabled veterans,” Hicks said. “Our concern has always been, as with all property bills, preserving those revenues to provide services countywide.”
The legislation now goes to the House Finance Committee.