State veteran benefits · ND
North Dakota Veteran Benefits
North Dakota scales property tax relief to the VA rating for veterans at 50 percent and above, with the credit wiping out up to $9,000 of the homestead's taxable valuation at a 100 percent rate.
By Mario Bailey, U.S. Air Force veteran · current Air National Guard member. Data updated 2026-07-10.
What North Dakota adds, benefit by benefit
Your federal VA benefits travel with you to any state. Everything below is the second stack: what North Dakota itself offers, each item checked against the state's own official source on the date shown.
Disabled veterans property tax credit
Veterans with a service-connected disability of 50 percent or greater, or an extra-schedular rating including individual unemployability paid at the 100 percent rate, receive a credit against the homestead's taxable valuation equal to their disability percentage, applied to the first $9,000 of taxable valuation. A 100 percent rating removes the full $9,000; 50 percent removes $4,500. If two qualifying veterans share the home, combined credits max out at $9,000, and a surviving spouse receiving VA dependency and indemnity compensation gets 100 percent of the credit.
Apply through your local assessor with proof of the service-connected rating and an honorable discharge, with applications due by April 1. The credit keys off taxable valuation, a technical figure much smaller than market value, so ask the assessor what it translates to on your parcel.
SOURCE: North Dakota Office of State Tax Commissioner · retrieved 2026-07-10
State income tax on military retirement
Since tax year 2019, military retirement benefit payments received by retired armed forces, Reserve, and National Guard members, or their surviving spouses, may be subtracted in full from North Dakota taxable income, equal to the taxable amount reported on the federal return. Attach the DFAS Form 1099-R when claiming it. VA disability compensation never appears in federal adjusted gross income, so North Dakota never touches it.
SOURCE: North Dakota Office of State Tax Commissioner · retrieved 2026-07-10
Dependent tuition waiver
A child, stepchild, spouse, widow, or widower of an eligible resident veteran who was killed in action, died from wounds or other service-connected causes, has a 100 percent service-connected disability, died from service-connected disabilities, was a prisoner of war, or was declared missing in action attends North Dakota state institutions of higher education free of tuition and fee charges, excluding aviation flight charges, toward a certificate or up to a bachelor's degree.
Residency rules attach to the veteran, with routes including birth in the state, six months of residency before entering service, or five years of residency before the dependent enrolls. Benefits are not lost if a POW or MIA service member returns.
SOURCE: North Dakota Department of Veterans Affairs · retrieved 2026-07-10
North Dakota Veterans Home
The state veterans home in Lisbon has cared for honorably discharged veterans and their spouses since 1893. Today it operates 52 skilled nursing beds and 98 basic care beds on a 90-acre wooded campus along the Sheyenne River, rebuilt in 2011 around a small-household design with private rooms.
SOURCE: North Dakota Veterans Home · retrieved 2026-07-10
North Dakota Veterans Cemetery
The state veterans cemetery sits 6.5 miles south of Mandan on Highway 1806, inside Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park. Established by 1989 legislation and opened in July 1992, it is operated by the Adjutant General of North Dakota, and pre-registration runs through a straightforward application with your DD-214 or NGB-22.
SOURCE: North Dakota National Guard · retrieved 2026-07-10
Reduced-fee hunting and fishing licenses
Resident veterans with a 50 percent service-related disability buy a fishing license for $10, and veterans with a 100 percent service-related disability qualify for a $10 combined hunting license, each plus a $2 certificate fee.
SOURCE: North Dakota Game and Fish Department · retrieved 2026-07-10
Relief by dial, not by switch
Most states treat disabled veteran property relief as a switch that flips at 100 percent. North Dakota built a dial. From 50 percent upward, every additional 10 points of rating buys another $900 of taxable valuation off the homestead, which changes how you should think about a pending claim: an increase from 60 to 80 percent is not just a larger monthly deposit from VA, it is a permanently lower tax bill on the house in Bismarck or Minot. The current disability pay tables give you the federal half of that equation; the county assessor can quote the state half in minutes.
Two eligibility wrinkles do the most quiet work here. First, an extra-schedular or individual unemployability rating paid at the 100 percent rate counts as 100 percent for the credit, a detail IU veterans routinely assume goes the other way. Second, a surviving spouse drawing dependency and indemnity compensation receives the full credit, not a reduced share, so the benefit survives the veteran. Both facts reward reading your award letter carefully rather than guessing from the combined percentage alone.
On income, North Dakota is simply clean: the whole taxable military pension subtracts out, the state’s rates were already among the lowest in the country, and disability pay was never in reach to begin with, as the VA disability taxation guide explains. The result is that a retired soldier working a second career in Fargo pays state tax on the new salary and nothing on the military past.
The benefit families overlook is the dependent tuition waiver, which is broader than its name suggests: spouses and stepchildren qualify, the trigger events include death from service-connected causes years after separation, and it covers a full bachelor’s degree at any state campus. For a household also holding transferred federal entitlement, sequencing the waiver against Chapter 33 matters, and the Post-9/11 GI Bill guide covers the federal side of that pairing. In a state this size, the whole stack, home, cemetery, waiver, credit, is administered by offices that answer their phones, which is its own kind of benefit.
Where to apply
State benefits are administered by the state, not by VA, so the applications above run through North Dakota Department of Veterans Affairs or the specific agency named in each source link. A free VA-accredited representative or VSO in North Dakota will know both stacks, the federal claim and the state paperwork, and charges nothing to help with either.