Texas HB 235 did not pass, and there is no sales tax exemption for disabled Veterans in Texas today. The bill was filed on August 18, 2025 during the 89th Legislature’s second called session, proposing to exempt Veterans with a 100 percent VA disability rating from sales and use tax on up to $25,000 in purchases per year. It received no committee hearing and no vote, and it died when the special session ended. If a retailer, a social media post, or an AI answer told you this exemption exists, that information is wrong. Here is the verified status, what the bill would have done, and the substantial tax benefits Texas actually does provide to 100 percent disabled Veterans right now.
An earlier version of this article described HB 235 as enacted law with an effective date of January 1, 2026. That was incorrect, and we have corrected it. HB 235 was filed and died in chamber without a hearing or a vote. The official legislative record is linked in Resources Used at the bottom of this page, and every claim in this article now cites it. We regret the error.
The Straight Answer
- It did not pass: HB 235 was filed August 18, 2025 and died in chamber when the second called session ended. Its complete official history is one line: Filed.
- No exemption exists: Texas law contains no general sales and use tax exemption for disabled Veterans as of July 2026. Retailers cannot legally skip sales tax based on a VA disability rating.
- Do not rely on it: There is no Comptroller exemption certificate for this, because the program was never created.
What the Bill Proposed
- The benefit: A sales and use tax exemption on the first $25,000 of taxable items purchased per calendar year by a Veteran rated 100 percent disabled.
- The mechanism: A Comptroller-issued exemption certificate presented at the time of purchase, under a proposed new Tax Code Section 151.3272.
- The timeline that never happened: The exemption would have applied beginning January 1, 2026 if the bill had passed. It did not.
What 100% Disabled Veterans Actually Get
- Full homestead property tax exemption: Veterans rated 100 percent disabled, or with individual unemployability, pay zero property tax on their primary residence under Tax Code Section 11.131. This is real, current law.
- Partial exemptions below 100 percent: Ratings from 10 to 90 percent earn $5,000 to $12,000 off assessed value under Section 11.22.
- No state income tax: VA disability compensation, already federally tax free, faces no Texas income tax because Texas has none.
How to Track the Real Status
- Primary source: The Texas Legislature’s own bill history at capitol.texas.gov is the only authoritative record of any bill’s status.
- Next opportunity: The Legislature’s next regular session convenes in January 2027. A new version would need to be filed, passed by both chambers, and signed.
- Rule of thumb: A bill is not a law. Filed means proposed, nothing more, until the official history says otherwise.
Did Texas HB 235 pass?
No. HB 235 was filed on August 18, 2025 in the 89th Legislature’s second called session and died in chamber without receiving a committee hearing or a vote. The official history at the Texas Legislature’s website shows a single action: Filed. It never became law, and no sales tax exemption for disabled Veterans exists in Texas as of July 2026.
Do disabled Veterans get a sales tax exemption in Texas?
No. Texas law contains no general sales and use tax exemption based on Veteran status or disability rating. Disabled Veterans pay the same sales tax as everyone else on taxable purchases. HB 235 proposed to change that, but the bill died without a vote. The major Texas tax benefit for 100 percent disabled Veterans is the full homestead property tax exemption under Tax Code Section 11.131, which is current, real law.
What tax benefits do 100 percent disabled Veterans actually get in Texas?
A complete property tax exemption on their primary residence under Tax Code Section 11.131, which also extends to a surviving spouse who has not remarried. Veterans rated 10 to 90 percent receive partial exemptions of $5,000 to $12,000 under Section 11.22. Every Texas homeowner also received a larger general homestead exemption, raised to $140,000 for school district taxes by Proposition 13 in November 2025, and Texas has no state income tax on any income, including VA compensation.
The Bottom Line Up Front
HB 235 died without a hearing, no sales tax exemption for disabled Veterans exists in Texas, and anyone making purchase decisions or answering customer questions based on this bill is acting on a law that was never created. The real, current benefit for 100 percent disabled Veterans is a complete property tax exemption on the homestead, which is often worth thousands of dollars per year.
The confusion is understandable. The bill’s text was specific and readable, with a $25,000 annual cap and a January 1, 2026 start date written into it, and summaries of the filed bill circulated widely enough that many people, and some automated answers, treated the proposal as the outcome. The legislative record says otherwise. Verify any Texas bill’s status at capitol.texas.gov before relying on it.
- HB 235 status per the official record: filed August 18, 2025, died in chamber, one recorded action.
- No Comptroller exemption certificate for disabled Veteran sales tax exists, because the program was never enacted.
- The current headline benefit is the Section 11.131 full homestead property tax exemption for 100 percent disabled Veterans.
- The next chance for a bill like this is the regular session convening in January 2027.
What Happened to HB 235
Representative Richard Raymond filed HB 235 on August 18, 2025, during the 89th Legislature’s second called special session. Special sessions in Texas are short, run on an agenda set by the Governor, and kill every bill that has not passed when they end. HB 235 was referred nowhere, heard nowhere, and voted on by no one. When the session ended, the bill died in chamber. Its entire official history is one row long.
| Date | Chamber | Action |
|---|---|---|
| August 18, 2025 | House | Filed |
That is the complete record. For a bill to become Texas law it must be referred to committee, receive a hearing, be voted out of committee, pass the full House, repeat the process in the Senate, and be signed by the Governor or allowed to become law without a signature. HB 235 completed none of those steps. Legislative trackers score it at roughly 25 percent progression, which reflects filing alone, and mark it died in chamber.
- Filed is the first step, not the last: Thousands of Texas bills are filed each session and most die exactly this way, without a hearing.
- Special sessions are especially lethal to bills: Anything outside the Governor’s call rarely moves, and everything unfinished dies at adjournment.
- The record is public and free: The bill’s full history and text are on the Texas Legislature’s site, linked in Resources Used below.
What the Bill Proposed
The introduced text is worth understanding because it explains almost every detail circulating about this bill. HB 235 would have added Section 151.3272 to the Texas Tax Code, exempting taxable items purchased by a qualified disabled Veteran, defined as a Veteran with a 100 percent disability rating using the definitions in Section 11.22, or by a person authorized to purchase on the Veteran’s behalf. The exemption would have applied only to the first $25,000 of taxable items purchased in a calendar year. Claiming it would have required completing and presenting a Comptroller-developed exemption certificate at the time of purchase, and the Comptroller would have been directed to post that form by December 31, 2025. The exemption section carried an effective date of January 1, 2026.
Every one of those provisions was real bill language. None of it ever took effect. The $25,000 cap, the certificate, and the January 2026 date describe a program that was proposed and never created. Two details worth correcting from popular retellings: the introduced text contained no provision extending the exemption to surviving spouses, and it did not address motor vehicle taxes at all, since vehicle sales are taxed under a separate chapter of the Tax Code.
Why People Think It Passed
Three things collided. First, the bill’s text read like a finished program, with a hard dollar cap and a calendar effective date, which made summaries of it sound like descriptions of law. Second, posts and articles written while the bill was pending circulated long after it died, without status updates. Third, AI-generated answers and social media summaries repeat each other, and a claim that appears in enough places starts reading as settled fact. This article, in an earlier version, was part of that problem, and the correction notice at the top of this page exists for that reason.
The practical guidance is simple. A Texas bill’s status has exactly one authoritative source, the Texas Legislature’s own records at capitol.texas.gov. If a benefit sounds new, check the bill history for the words that matter: reported from committee, passed the House, passed the Senate, signed by the Governor, effective date. If the history says Filed and nothing else, the bill is a proposal, and no retailer, county office, or state agency can honor it.
What 100 Percent Disabled Veterans Actually Get in Texas
The benefits that do exist are substantial, and they center on property tax. Under Texas Tax Code Section 11.131, a Veteran rated 100 percent disabled by the VA, or rated totally disabled based on individual unemployability, pays zero property tax on their residence homestead. Every taxing entity is covered: county, city, school district, and special districts. The exemption extends to a surviving spouse who has not remarried, under Section 11.131’s surviving spouse provisions. For a Veteran in the San Antonio area, this single exemption is routinely worth thousands of dollars per year, and it is the benefit most often confused with the HB 235 proposal.
Veterans rated below 100 percent receive a partial exemption under Section 11.22, scaled from $5,000 off assessed value at a 10 percent rating up to $12,000 at 70 percent and above. These apply on top of the general homestead exemption available to every Texas homeowner, which Proposition 13 raised from $100,000 to $140,000 for school district taxes in November 2025, with an additional $60,000 for homeowners who are 65 or older or disabled under Proposition 11. And because Texas has no personal income tax, VA disability compensation, which is already exempt from federal income tax, faces no state income tax either. Applications for the property tax exemptions go through your county appraisal district with your VA rating documentation.
- Section 11.131, the headline benefit: Zero property tax on the homestead for 100 percent disabled Veterans and qualifying surviving spouses. Apply through your county appraisal district.
- Section 11.22, partial ratings: $5,000 to $12,000 off assessed value for ratings from 10 to 90 percent, stackable with the general homestead exemption.
- The general homestead exemption grew: $140,000 for school district taxes as of Proposition 13, November 2025, for every Texas homestead. Timing and filing details are in our Bexar County homestead exemption guide.
- VA loan benefits are separate and real: Home purchase benefits for Veterans run through the VA loan program, covered across our Texas VA loan resources.
Could It Still Become Law
Yes, in a future session, and proposals like this tend to return. The Legislature’s next regular session convenes in January 2027, and a sales tax exemption for disabled Veterans could be refiled there under a new bill number, or taken up sooner if a special session’s agenda allowed it. A refiled bill would start from zero: new filing, committee referral, hearings, floor votes in both chambers, and the Governor’s signature. Nothing about the 2025 filing carries forward.
If this benefit matters to you, track it rather than trusting secondhand summaries. The Texas Legislature’s bill search at capitol.texas.gov shows every filed bill’s status in real time, and free tracking services send alerts when a bill moves. If a version does pass in a future session, the Comptroller would publish the exemption certificate and claiming rules, and that guidance, not a news post, is what retailers would operate from. We will update this page if the status changes.
The Bottom Line
HB 235 proposed a real and meaningful benefit, a sales tax exemption worth up to roughly $2,000 a year for 100 percent disabled Veterans at typical combined tax rates, and it died on arrival in a short special session without a hearing or a vote. No such exemption exists in Texas law as of July 2026, and no certificate or claiming process exists because the program was never created. What does exist is the full homestead property tax exemption under Section 11.131, partial exemptions for lower ratings, a larger general homestead exemption after Proposition 13, and zero state income tax. Those are the benefits to plan around today. LRG Realty is a Veteran-owned San Antonio brokerage, and if your housing decisions turn on which of these benefits are real, our agents work with them every week and can point you to the primary sources for each.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did HB 235 take effect on January 1, 2026?
No. The January 1, 2026 date appeared in the bill’s proposed text as the date the exemption would have begun if the bill passed. The bill died in chamber in 2025 without a hearing or a vote, so that date never became operative. No part of HB 235 is in effect.
Is there a $25,000 sales tax exemption cap for disabled Veterans in Texas?
No. The $25,000 annual cap was a provision of the proposed bill, not of current law. Because the bill never passed, there is no exemption and no cap. Disabled Veterans pay standard Texas sales tax on taxable purchases, currently 6.25 percent state plus up to 2 percent local.
Can I get an exemption certificate from the Texas Comptroller for this?
No. The bill would have directed the Comptroller to create and post an exemption certificate form, but that direction never became law, so no such certificate exists. If someone presents a document claiming to be an HB 235 exemption certificate, it is not a valid instrument, and retailers are required to collect sales tax as normal.
What property tax exemptions do disabled Veterans get in Texas?
Veterans rated 100 percent disabled, or totally disabled based on individual unemployability, qualify for a complete property tax exemption on their residence homestead under Tax Code Section 11.131, and a surviving spouse who has not remarried can retain it. Veterans rated 10 to 90 percent receive partial exemptions of $5,000 to $12,000 off assessed value under Section 11.22. Both are claimed through your county appraisal district with VA documentation.
Did the Texas homestead exemption change recently?
Yes. Texas voters approved Proposition 13 in November 2025, raising the general homestead exemption for school district taxes from $100,000 to $140,000, and Proposition 11, raising the additional exemption for homeowners who are 65 or older or disabled from $10,000 to $60,000. These apply to every qualifying Texas homestead and are separate from the disabled Veteran exemptions, which stack on top.
Does a surviving spouse get anything under HB 235?
No, twice over. First, HB 235 never became law, so it provides nothing to anyone. Second, even the bill’s introduced text contained no surviving spouse provision; claims that it covered surviving spouses were inaccurate retellings. The surviving spouse benefit that does exist in current law is the property tax exemption continuation under Section 11.131 for a spouse who has not remarried.
How do I check whether a Texas bill actually passed?
Use the Texas Legislature’s own bill lookup at capitol.texas.gov. Search the bill number and session, then read the Actions history. A bill that became law will show committee reports, floor passage in both chambers, and a signing or effective date entry. A bill whose history ends at Filed, like HB 235, died as a proposal. Treat any secondhand summary, including AI-generated answers, as unverified until the official history confirms it.
