A Danbury, Connecticut, veteran who is rated 100 percent totally and permanently disabled cannot rely on last year’s approval. The city assessor’s office wants a new application and a current Veterans Affairs rating letter every year, no later than Dec. 31, for the exemption on the veteran’s primary dwelling. The requirement comes with a quirk: the permanent rating is permanent, but the paperwork behind it is not.
An exemption created in 2024, with an annual catch
The Danbury Assessor’s page for veterans with disabilities describes the exemption for “100% Totally and Permanently Disabled Veterans” as a product of a 2024 state law. It exempts the veteran’s primary dwelling, and unlike the older exemption in Connecticut’s section 12-81(19), it does not require 90 days of wartime service.
Applications, the page says, must be received “no later than December 31st annually” along with a current VA letter. The city explains that the form and an updated letter have to be submitted every year because of a change in statutes.
Danbury homeowners with a 100 percent total and permanent rating have the most to check this fall. A veteran who was approved earlier and assumes that a rating the VA calls permanent carries the exemption forward without being asked is the case the annual rule is written around, and the city’s page says the letter has to be current each time.
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The wording makes the date a recurring one. A veteran approved last winter has no standing approval to carry into the next filing cycle, and the city’s page gives no grace period and no automatic renewal notice for this exemption.
The rating letter is the VA’s own disability rating letter, submitted with the city’s Totally and Permanently Disabled Veteran Application, which the assessor posts on its website. The assessor’s office is at 155 Deer Hill Avenue, and its phone is 203-797-4556.
What the city does not publish about the dollar value
The page does not state a dollar amount for the totally and permanently disabled exemption. It says the exemption covers the primary dwelling, but it does not say how that is applied to the assessment, and it does not publish an income limit. The silence matters, because a veteran deciding whether the filing is worth the trip cannot read the savings off the page.
The percentage-based disability exemption is different. The city lists amounts taken off the assessment: up to $3,000 for a 10 to 25 percent rating, $7,500 for 26 to 50 percent, $9,000 for 51 to 75 percent, and $10,500 for 76 to 100 percent. A veteran rated at least 10 percent and over 65 can get up to $10,500.
Those figures belong to the broader percentage-based disability exemption, not the 100 percent route. They show the scale of the benefit on the city’s own page: the top rating on that scale is $10,500 off the assessment, while the page offers nothing in dollars for the totally and permanently disabled exemption.
The basic exemption and the 90-day war-service test
The city’s separate veterans exemptions page says the basic exemption for the City of Danbury is $1,500 off the assessment of a property. Current service members and honorably discharged veterans with at least 90 days of service during a war period qualify.
Before June 8, 2009, that service had to be 90 consecutive days. Since then, 90 cumulative days is enough. Veterans with a disability may also qualify, the page adds, and some exemptions extend to surviving family members.
The basic exemption comes off an assessment, and the assessor’s home page says Danbury assesses property at 70 percent of fair market value. The page also says real estate is revalued every five years, while motor vehicles and business personal property are valued annually.
The assessment ratio changes what the dollar figures mean. At that 70 percent ratio, $1,500 off the assessment corresponds to about $2,143 of market value, and the $10,500 top of the percentage scale corresponds to $15,000, by simple division. The unpublished value of the 100 percent exemption is the figure a veteran would most want to know, and it is not on the city’s page.
Disabled veterans may be eligible for additional benefits by meeting income guidelines, according to the disabilities page, which sends readers to a separate Additional Veteran’s Exemption page. The disabilities page gives no income number.
The question the pages leave open
What the city’s pages do not say is which tax year a Dec. 31 filing reaches, and whether a veteran who files after the date loses the exemption for a year or only part of one. They state the date and the annual repeat and stop there.
Those two unknowns decide how costly a missed date is. A veteran who files on time knows the paperwork is done. One who misses Dec. 31 is working without a published fallback, because the only deadline the city has stated is “no later than December 31st annually.”
Is the Dec. 31 VA letter on its way to Danbury’s assessor?
For a Danbury veteran the risk is a single date: the city says the application and a current VA letter must arrive no later than Dec. 31 annually, and its pages publish no grace period if they do not.
The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit includes an application log and renewal calendar, and its Part 7, The Yearly Routine, lays out an annual cycle for property-tax paperwork, so a Dec. 31 refiling date is written down once.
Get the relief kit’s application log and renewal calendar for the Dec. 31 refiling →
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
