State veteran benefits · OH
Ohio Veteran Benefits
Ohio's enhanced homestead exemption shields $50,000 of a totally disabled veteran's home value from property tax, indexed upward each year, with no income test attached.
By Mario Bailey, U.S. Air Force veteran · current Air National Guard member. Data updated 2026-07-10.
What Ohio adds, benefit by benefit
Your federal VA benefits travel with you to any state. Everything below is the second stack: what Ohio itself offers, each item checked against the state's own official source on the date shown.
Enhanced homestead exemption
Ohio Revised Code section 323.152 reduces a qualifying disabled veteran's property taxes by exempting the taxable value of $50,000 of the home's true value, an amount adjusted annually for inflation. Unlike Ohio's standard senior and disabled homestead exemption, the disabled veteran version carries no income test, and a surviving spouse keeps the reduction until death or remarriage.
Apply through your county auditor on Form DTE 105I with your DD-214 and the VA award letter showing a 100 percent service-connected disability rating. The standard homestead exemption is roughly half the size and is means-tested, so veterans who qualify for the enhanced version should never settle for the standard one.
SOURCE: Ohio Revised Code, Section 323.152 · retrieved 2026-07-10
State income tax on military retirement
Ohio Revised Code section 5747.01(A)(23) lets taxpayers deduct amounts received as retired personnel pay for service in the uniformed services, the reserve components, or the National Guard, to the extent the pay is in federal adjusted gross income. VA disability compensation is excluded from federal AGI in the first place, so Ohio never taxes it.
SOURCE: Ohio Revised Code, Section 5747.01 · retrieved 2026-07-10
War Orphan and Severely Disabled Veterans' Children Scholarship
Children of deceased or severely disabled Ohio veterans receive tuition help at Ohio colleges: for the 2025-2026 academic year the scholarship board funded 77 percent of tuition and general fees at public institutions and $6,330 per year at private ones. Students must attend full time, renewals require a 2.0 cumulative GPA, and applications close May 15 each year.
SOURCE: Ohio Department of Higher Education · retrieved 2026-07-10
Ohio Veterans Homes
The state operates two veterans homes: Sandusky, which offers skilled nursing plus a domiciliary for veterans capable of independent or lightly supervised living, and Georgetown, a skilled nursing facility. Admission requires Ohio residency, an honorable discharge, and wartime service or an expeditionary medal.
SOURCE: Ohio Department of Veterans Services · retrieved 2026-07-10
Free hunting and fishing licenses
Under Ohio Revised Code section 1533.12, resident veterans rated by VA as permanently and totally disabled and receiving VA compensation or pension, and honorably discharged former prisoners of war, receive fishing licenses, hunting licenses, fur taker permits, deer and wild turkey permits, and wetlands habitat stamps free of charge.
SOURCE: Ohio Revised Code, Section 1533.12 · retrieved 2026-07-10
Civil service exam credit
An honorably discharged veteran residing in Ohio who passes a state civil service examination receives additional credit of 20 percent of the total passing grade. A separate 15 percent credit exists for those who completed initial entry-level training, and the two cannot be combined.
SOURCE: Ohio Revised Code, Section 124.23 · retrieved 2026-07-10
Where Ohio rewards the paperwork
Ohio’s veteran benefits are written into statute rather than splashed across campaigns, and the statute is unusually generous in one specific way: the enhanced homestead exemption ignores income. The standard homestead program turns away middle-class retirees on a means test, but a 100 percent service-connected veteran drawing a full pension and a civilian salary still qualifies for the doubled, inflation-indexed exemption. That design makes Ohio’s benefit most valuable to exactly the veteran other states quietly exclude: the high-earning P&T homeowner in a Columbus or Cincinnati suburb where property values, and therefore the exemption’s dollar value, run highest.
The income side is equally clean but for a different reason. Military retired pay comes off the Ohio return entirely, and since disability compensation never enters federal adjusted gross income, it never reaches Ohio either; the guide to VA disability and taxes covers why that holds in every state. A retired master sergeant working at Wright-Patterson as a civilian pays Ohio tax on the federal salary alone.
What gets missed here is oddly specific: deer permits. Ohio’s free-license statute for permanently and totally disabled veterans covers not just the base hunting and fishing licenses but deer permits, turkey permits, fur taker permits, and wetlands stamps, and plenty of eligible hunters keep buying them out of habit. The other perennial miss is the May 15 deadline for the War Orphans scholarship; it is a hard annual cutoff, and a family that learns about the program in June waits a year.
Two boundary notes keep expectations honest. Ohio’s property relief is a fixed slice, not a full wipe-out, so a P&T veteran in a high-tax district still pays most of the bill; if your rating is under 100 percent, the exemption offers nothing, which raises the stakes of getting the rating right in the first place, as laid out in the current pay and rating tables. And the 20 percent civil service bump applies to Ohio government exams only; the federal hiring system runs on its own rules, covered in the veterans’ preference guide.
Where to apply
State benefits are administered by the state, not by VA, so the applications above run through Ohio Department of Veterans Services or the specific agency named in each source link. A free VA-accredited representative or VSO in Ohio will know both stacks, the federal claim and the state paperwork, and charges nothing to help with either.