Texas has no state income tax. That is exactly why property tax carries so much more weight here than in whatever state you moved from — and why the veteran exemptions are worth understanding properly rather than half-remembering something a neighbor said. There are four of them that matter, one of them is brand new, and the most common mistake people make about the smallest one overstates it by a factor of about forty.
Here are the real 2025–26 rates, per $100 of value, published by the City of Burleson:
| Taxing entity | Rate |
|---|---|
| City of Burleson | 0.7218 |
| Burleson ISD | 1.2552 |
| Johnson County | 0.389276 |
| Tarrant County | 0.48998 |
So a Burleson home on the Johnson County side runs about 2.37% combined, and one on the Tarrant side about 2.47%. A $12,000 value exemption is therefore worth roughly $285 to $295 a year — not $12,000.
That is not a reason to skip it. Free money is free money, and it compounds every year you own the house. But I would rather you have the right expectation than call your appraisal district furious about a bill that came out differently than you pictured.
The total exemption, on the other hand, is exactly what it sounds like.
A total exemption on the appraised value of your residence homestead. Not a discount. The whole thing.
Here is the part that gets missed, and it matters to a lot of people: you qualify with a 100 percent disability rating or with a determination of individual unemployability paid at the 100 percent rate. The Texas Comptroller says both. So does the Central Appraisal District of Johnson County, which lays it out as two separate qualifying paths on its own veterans page. If you are rated 70 percent but paid at the 100 percent rate under IU, you are in.
For ratings below the total-exemption threshold, a fixed amount comes off the value:
| Disability rating | Off the value |
|---|---|
| 10% to 29% | $5,000 |
| 30% to 49% | $7,500 |
| 50% to 69% | $10,000 |
| 70% to 100% | $12,000 |
Two things about this one that surprise people.
It is not limited to your homestead. Unlike every other exemption on this page, § 11.22 can be applied to any one property you own. If you have a rental, you have a choice to make about where to put it.
And if you are 65 or older, the bracket may not apply to you. A veteran who is age 65 or older with a rating of at least 10 percent — or who is totally blind in one or both eyes, or who has lost the use of one or more limbs — qualifies for the full $12,000 regardless of where the rating otherwise falls in that table. If you are 68 with a 10 percent rating and your district has you at $5,000, call them.
This one is for a partially disabled veteran whose residence homestead was donated by a charitable organization — at no cost, or at a cost not exceeding half the home’s market value. Where it applies the exemption is a percentage rather than a dollar amount, and the percentage equals the disability rating. A 50 percent rating exempts 50 percent of the appraised value. Structurally different from § 11.22, and much larger.
That is the PACT Act population. Burn pits. Agent Orange. Camp Lejeune. If your husband or wife died of a presumptive cancer while carrying a 30 percent rating, the old rules gave you very little. This one gives you everything, and it is new enough that I would not assume your appraisal district has proactively found you.
Texas voters approved two other things on that same November 2025 ballot that are worth knowing: the school district homestead exemption went to $140,000, with an additional $60,000 for homeowners 65 or older or disabled. For a veteran with a partial rating, that ordinary homestead exemption is doing far more work than the $12,000 veteran exemption is. Stack all of them.
There are two more in this family, both total exemptions on the homestead for an unmarried surviving spouse: § 11.133, for the spouse of a service member killed or fatally injured in the line of duty, and § 11.134, the same for a first responder.
This one has direct consequences if you are thinking about selling, and it is buried in a Comptroller FAQ where almost nobody looks.
A surviving spouse keeps the § 11.131 total exemption on three conditions: they have not remarried, the property was their residence homestead when the veteran died, and it remains their residence homestead.
If they move, the exemption does not reset to 100 percent at the new house. It carries over as the dollar amount of the exemption on the old home in the last year they received it. So a spouse moving from a $300,000 house to a $500,000 house carries a $300,000 exemption — and pays tax on the remaining $200,000.
That does not mean do not move. It means run the number first, because it can change what you can afford in a way nobody warns you about at the listing appointment.
Most of Burleson is in Johnson County. The northern slice is in Tarrant County. Which appraisal district you file with depends on which side of the line your house sits on, and filing with the wrong one can cost you a year.
And the single most useful thing in this article: Johnson County runs a veterans services office right in Burleson, at the sub-courthouse, 247 Elk Dr., Suite 102, (817) 202-2971, weekdays 8:00 to 4:30. They help with identifying, filing and completing the forms, and it is free. Tarrant County’s equivalent is at 1200 Circle Dr. in Fort Worth, (817) 531-5645, also free.
One honest caveat, checked September 2026: Johnson County CAD’s disabled veteran exemptions page says a late application “may be filed up to two years after the deadline,” which contradicts the Comptroller’s five years. The same page asks for a Social Security award letter, which is documentation for the disabled person exemption rather than the disabled veteran one. I would call (817) 648-3000 rather than rely on that page.
If you buy mid-year, you do not wait until January — at least on the total exemption. The Comptroller is explicit for § 11.131: a person qualifying after January 1 of a tax year may receive the exemption immediately on qualification, for the applicable portion of that year. Buy in August, qualify in August. I have not found the Comptroller saying the same about the partial § 11.22 exemption, so ask your district rather than assuming it works identically.
These are lender practice rather than law, which is exactly why they get missed.
The seller’s exemption does not come with the house. It is personal to the qualifying owner. You inherit nothing and must qualify and file in your own name.
Your loan will probably be underwritten on un-exempt taxes. At application, the property’s taxes get estimated from the appraisal district’s current record — which is the seller’s situation, not yours. For a totally exempt veteran that can mean several hundred dollars a month of phantom payment inside your qualifying ratio and your escrow deposit. Ask your loan officer three questions at application, not at closing:
Some lenders will do it with the VA award letter in the file. Some will not. It varies, and it is worth asking two of them.
Moving to Burleson and not sure what your rating is worth here? Send me the address you are considering and your rating, and I will tell you which county it is in, which appraisal district you file with, and roughly what the exemption changes about the payment. I am a REALTOR and not a tax professional, so treat it as a starting point — but it is a much better starting point than guessing.
Ask me before you fileChecked September 2026. VA loan rules and Texas exemption amounts change — confirm current figures with your lender, the VA, or your appraisal district before you rely on them. I am a REALTOR, not a lender or a tax professional.
REALTOR® · BHHS PenFed Realty Texas
I help buyers and sellers across the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex — Fort Worth, Burleson, Crowley and Keller, and the surrounding Dallas area. I write these because they are the questions I answer on the phone every week, and most people never get a straight answer to them. If you have one I have not covered, ask me — I will probably turn it into the next post.