VA Disability Rating Calculator

If you have more than one service-connected condition, VA doesn't just add your ratings together. A 50% rating and a 30% rating don't make 80%. Instead, VA uses a method sometimes called "VA math," set out in 38 C.F.R. § 4.25, that combines ratings against your remaining efficiency rather than stacking them.

Here's how it works. Think of yourself as starting at 100% able-bodied. VA lines up your ratings from highest to lowest. The highest rating comes off that 100%. The next rating is applied to what's left over, not to the original 100%, and so on down the list. That's why combining several mid-size ratings almost always comes out lower than simple addition. For example, 50% and 30% combine to 65%, which VA rounds to 70%. Because VA always sorts the ratings the same way and rounds only once, at the very end, the same set of ratings always gives the same combined rating.

There are wrinkles that make this harder to estimate by hand. The bilateral factor (38 C.F.R. § 4.26) can add a small extra amount when you have ratings of 10% or more on both arms, both legs, or paired skeletal muscles. The conditions don't have to be the same kind. VA combines those ratings, adds 10% of that combined value, and then combines the result with your other ratings. If counting one or more ratings in the bilateral factor would give you a lower combined rating, VA leaves those ratings out of the bilateral factor and combines them separately with your other ratings. VA rounds the final combined number to the nearest 10%, and a number ending in 5 rounds up. Your combined rating then sets your monthly payment from VA's published pay tables, which change from year to year. We won't quote a dollar figure here, since it depends on your rating, your dependents (extra amounts for dependents start at a 30% combined rating), and the rates in effect when you're reading this.

Once this calculator is live, you'll be able to enter each of your individual ratings and see your combined rating, whether the bilateral factor applies, and an estimate of your monthly compensation based on current VA rates, all without doing the math by hand.