State veteran benefits · SD
South Dakota Veteran Benefits
South Dakota exempts up to $200,000 of a permanently and totally disabled veteran's home value from property tax, in a state that already collects no personal income tax.
By Mario Bailey, U.S. Air Force veteran · current Air National Guard member. Data updated 2026-07-10.
What South Dakota adds, benefit by benefit
Your federal VA benefits travel with you to any state. Everything below is the second stack: what South Dakota itself offers, each item checked against the state's own official source on the date shown.
Up to $200,000 of home value exempted for P&T veterans
South Dakota exempts up to $200,000 of the assessed value of a dwelling owned and occupied by a veteran rated permanently and totally disabled from a service-connected disability, or by the unremarried surviving spouse. A separate program fully exempts the home of a paraplegic veteran, or a veteran with loss or loss of use of both lower extremities, when the house is designed for wheelchair use, with the same unremarried widow or widower carryover.
SOURCE: South Dakota Department of Revenue · retrieved 2026-07-10
No state income tax
South Dakota is one of the states that does not impose a state income tax, so military retired pay, Survivor Benefit Plan payments, and wages are untaxed by the state. VA disability compensation is tax-free everywhere: the IRS excludes VA disability benefits from gross income entirely.
SOURCE: South Dakota Department of Revenue · retrieved 2026-07-10
Free undergraduate tuition, one month per month of wartime service
Under SDCL 13-55-2 to 13-55-5, eligible wartime veterans take undergraduate courses at South Dakota's state-supported universities and technical colleges tuition-free: one month of free tuition per month of qualifying service, with a floor of one academic year and a ceiling of four. The catch is real: it is only for veterans who are NOT eligible for GI Bill payments or any other federal education program, plus an honorable discharge and South Dakota residency with in-state tuition.
Applications go through the school's financial aid or registrar's office and are certified by the Department of Veterans Affairs in Pierre with a copy of the DD-214.
SOURCE: South Dakota Department of Veterans Affairs · retrieved 2026-07-10
Guaranteed interview and preference at every level of government
Eligible veterans receive preference for appointment, employment, and promotion in state, county, municipal, and school district jobs. If the veteran meets the minimum qualifications, the statute is blunt: the veteran shall be granted an interview. A service-disabled veteran is preferred over a non-disabled veteran, and the unmarried surviving spouse, or the spouse of a disabled veteran who cannot use the preference, inherits it.
SOURCE: South Dakota Department of Veterans Affairs · retrieved 2026-07-10
Michael J. Fitzmaurice State Veterans Home, Hot Springs
The state's veterans home in Hot Springs, rebuilt in 2016, is a 100-bed facility with 78 nursing beds and 24 domiciliary beds, organized into eight small neighborhoods of 12 to 13 residents, each with its own living room, dining room, and kitchen.
SOURCE: South Dakota Department of Veterans Affairs · retrieved 2026-07-10
$10 four-year hunting and fishing license at 40 percent
Game, Fish and Parks issues a combined hunting and fishing license valid for four years for a $10 fee to resident veterans with the VA 'K' award or an allotment for a disability of 40 percent or greater, and to former POWs (SDCL 41-6-10.2 and 41-17-13.4).
Separately, resident veterans with a 100 percent total service-connected disability, former POWs, and Purple Heart recipients qualify for a lifetime state park entrance license: free vehicle entry plus a 50 percent discount on camping and electrical fees.
SOURCE: South Dakota Game, Fish, and Parks · retrieved 2026-07-10
South Dakota Veterans Cemetery, Sioux Falls
The state's first federally funded, state-owned and operated veterans cemetery was dedicated on Memorial Day 2021 near Sioux Falls. Every burial option is free for the veteran; a spouse's interment runs $1,002, a fee that adjusts and cannot be prepaid.
SOURCE: South Dakota Department of Veterans Affairs · retrieved 2026-07-10
Read South Dakota’s free tuition statute twice, because it inverts the usual order of operations. Most state tuition programs stack on top of the Post-9/11 GI Bill; South Dakota’s is written for the veteran the federal system left behind. If you are still eligible for Chapter 33 payments, you are locked out. If your delimiting date passed, or you never accrued enough qualifying time, the state steps in with a month of free tuition for every month you served in a qualifying wartime window, up to four academic years. That makes it one of the few meaningful education benefits in the country for pre-9/11 veterans, and almost nobody who qualifies knows it exists.
The property tax exemption is the anchor for disabled homeowners, and the number to watch is the assessment, not the tax bill. Up to $200,000 of assessed value comes off the top for a permanently and totally disabled veteran, which in most of the state outside Sioux Falls and Rapid City covers the majority of the house. The rating requirement is strict P&T, so a 100 percent scheduler rating without the permanent designation does not qualify; if your rating decision is ambiguous on that point, it is worth understanding how the combined rating was built and asking VA to clarify permanence before the county assessor asks you.
With no state income tax, South Dakota never touches military retired pay, and VA compensation is untaxed everywhere, so the state’s entire tax conversation happens at the county assessor’s office. That is also where it can quietly fail: both the exemption and the veterans preference operate on paperwork filed locally, and the preference statute’s guaranteed interview only triggers if you claimed veteran status on the application.
The best fit for this state is a wartime-era veteran on a fixed income who owns a modest home: the exemption removes most of the tax, the $10 four-year license and the lifetime park pass cover the outdoors, and the Hot Springs home, rebuilt around 12-person neighborhoods rather than wards, is an unusually humane backstop for late life. The commonly missed item is the cemetery. Sioux Falls only opened in 2021, so families of veterans who died earlier default to private plots without checking it; a veteran’s burial there is free for every option, with federal memorial benefits layered underneath, and the state preference even follows the surviving spouse into the county job that often comes next.
Where to apply
State benefits are administered by the state, not by VA, so the applications above run through South Dakota Department of Veterans Affairs or the specific agency named in each source link. A free VA-accredited representative or VSO in South Dakota will know both stacks, the federal claim and the state paperwork, and charges nothing to help with either.