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National Guard members receive a DD-214 after graduating from initial training. Does that count in New Jersey? Some have been told the time in initial training (Basic and AIT or OSUT) is active duty, but some online explanations on civilian web sites have been written to exclude any and all National Guard service.

from article OPINION: Tax exemption is good news for veterans

As used in Chapter 3, Title 38A of the New Jersey Statute: (b) “veteran” means any person who has served in any branch of the armed forces of the United States for at least 90 days.

I was active duty, so I don't know a lot about the Guard/Reserves. But there's more than just basic training, right? Don't you have some initial period of service (a few months?) before you are released to Active Reserve status?

Seems to me that, if you received a DD-214 and Box 24 reads "Honorable," you should qualify for the exemption.

National Guard members receive a DD-214 after graduating from initial training. Does that count in New Jersey? Some have been told the time in initial training (Basic and AIT or OSUT) is active duty, but some online explanations on civilian web sites have been written to exclude any and all National Guard service.

Yes, it is active duty time. It counts for retirement points, and is included as active time for education benefits, if you have enough other active time.

For other veteran's benefits, it can go either way. Most places consider you a veteran if you served and were honorably discharged. Some veteran's statuses require deployments or certain amounts of active duty time.

Then, there is also active duty service within the Guard, that isn't federal deployments. AGR (Active Guard and Reserve) are full-time active duty jobs that are filled by soldiers who run most of the day-to-day operations for each unit. ADOS (Active Duty - Operational Support) orders can come out when a unit needs people to assist with performing certain tasks, such as equipment transfers, major inventories, or other duties. (Most of the time this is just mutas or other pay methods, since they're cheaper.) Any orders over 30 days are generally going to be some form of active duty orders.