State veteran benefits · TN
Tennessee Veteran Benefits
Tennessee reimburses a 100 percent permanently and totally disabled veteran's property taxes on the first $175,000 of the home's market value, with no income test attached.
By Mario Bailey, U.S. Air Force veteran · current Air National Guard member. Data updated 2026-07-10.
What Tennessee adds, benefit by benefit
Your federal VA benefits travel with you to any state. Everything below is the second stack: what Tennessee itself offers, each item checked against the state's own official source on the date shown.
Tax relief on the first $175,000 of market value, reimbursed
Tennessee's program is a reimbursement, not an exemption: you pay the bill and the state pays you back for the taxes on up to $175,000 of the home's market value. Eligible veterans have a service-connected permanent and total disability, paraplegia or permanent paralysis of both legs, legal blindness, loss or loss of use of two or more limbs from service, or 100 percent permanent total disability from time as a POW. Unlike the elderly and disabled homeowner tracks, the disabled veteran track has no income limit.
A widow or widower who was married to the veteran at death and has not remarried keeps the relief, and it extends to spouses of service members who died in combat-related or deployed line-of-duty circumstances. Apply through the county trustee with consent form F-16 (F-16S for surviving spouses) within 35 days of the delinquency date; eligibility is confirmed directly with VA.
SOURCE: Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury · retrieved 2026-07-10
No personal income tax since the Hall tax repeal
Tennessee's only individual income tax, the Hall tax on interest and dividends, was repealed for tax periods beginning on or after January 1, 2021. The state now taxes no wages, no pensions, and no military retired pay. VA disability compensation was never taxable anywhere: the IRS excludes it from gross income.
SOURCE: Tennessee Department of Revenue · retrieved 2026-07-10
Helping Heroes Grant: $1,000 a semester for decorated post-9/11 veterans
The lottery-funded Helping Heroes Grant pays $1,000 per term to veterans completing at least 12 semester hours, for holders of the Iraq Campaign Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal, or Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal. It is capped at 375 veterans per year, first come, first served, so the application date matters as much as eligibility.
SOURCE: Tennessee Department of Veterans Services · retrieved 2026-07-10
TEAM Act interview preference in state hiring
Under the TEAM Act, veterans receive interview preferences for both appointments and promotions in Tennessee state government, and when two candidates are equally qualified the job goes to the veteran. A supervisor who passes over an eligible veteran must document the reasoning in writing, and veterans get 60 months of service credit in layoff decisions.
SOURCE: Tennessee Department of Veterans Services · retrieved 2026-07-10
Five state veterans homes
Tennessee operates state veterans homes in Murfreesboro, Humboldt (W.D. 'Bill' Manning), Clarksville (Brigadier General Wendell H. Gilbert), Knoxville (Ben Atchley), and Cleveland, run by the Tennessee State Veterans Homes Board.
SOURCE: Tennessee Department of Veterans Services · retrieved 2026-07-10
Lifetime hunting and fishing license for a one-time $10
Tennessee residents who are 100 percent permanently and totally disabled from a service-connected cause, or 30 percent or more disabled from war service, get a permanent sport fishing and hunting license for a one-time $10 fee, applied for through TWRA with a DD-214 rather than bought at a license agent.
SOURCE: Tennessee Department of Veterans Services · retrieved 2026-07-10
Five state veterans cemeteries
The Tennessee Department of Veterans Services maintains five state veterans cemeteries: one in Nashville, one in Memphis, two in Knoxville, and one at Parkers Crossroads, giving every grand division of the state a nearby option.
SOURCE: Tennessee Department of Veterans Services · retrieved 2026-07-10
The word that defines Tennessee’s flagship benefit is reimbursement. The state does not erase a disabled veteran’s property tax bill; it pays it back, on the first $175,000 of market value, after you pay it. That distinction has two practical edges. First, cash flow: budget for the full bill each fall, because the state’s check follows the trustee’s paperwork. Second, the cap: in Nashville or Franklin, where the median home has run past $175,000 several times over, a 100 percent P&T veteran still pays real tax on the value above the line. In Humboldt or Parkers Crossroads the same veteran effectively pays nothing. Tennessee’s benefit is worth the most exactly where housing costs the least, which is the opposite of how most people assume these programs work.
What the disabled veteran track does not have is an income test, and that is the detail worth repeating. The elderly and disabled homeowner tracks cap income around $38,000; the veteran track asks only about the disability. A working 100 percent P&T veteran with a six-figure salary still qualifies. Since the Hall tax died in 2021 the state also has no claim on retired pay or investment income, and VA compensation is untaxed everywhere, so a Tennessee veteran’s entire recurring tax exposure is the county property bill the state then partly hands back.
Helping Heroes is a different kind of program: small, capped, and medal-gated. A thousand dollars a semester will not carry a degree, but it stacks on top of the Post-9/11 GI Bill rather than replacing it, and the 375-per-year cap means January applicants collect while April applicants wait. Treat it as a deadline problem, not an eligibility problem.
The stack rewards the settled, rural, permanently rated veteran most: tax relief that covers the whole house, a $10 license that never renews, five homes and five cemeteries spread so that western, middle, and eastern Tennessee each have both. The commonly missed move is filing the F-16 consent form at the trustee’s office in the first place, because the reimbursement is not automatic even when VA’s records already prove eligibility, and each year’s window closes 35 days after the delinquency date. State employment preference follows the same rule as everything else here: it only works if you claim it in writing.
Where to apply
State benefits are administered by the state, not by VA, so the applications above run through Tennessee Department of Veterans Services or the specific agency named in each source link. A free VA-accredited representative or VSO in Tennessee will know both stacks, the federal claim and the state paperwork, and charges nothing to help with either.