VA Disability Compensation Calculator

Introduction to VA combined disability ratings and monthly compensation

The Department of Veterans Affairs evaluates each service-connected condition separately and assigns it a percentage evaluation drawn from the Schedule for Rating Disabilities in 38 CFR Part 4. A veteran with tinnitus, a lumbar strain, a knee condition and sleep apnea therefore does not have one rating but four, and the single number that appears on a rating decision letter and drives the monthly payment is the combined evaluation derived from all of them. That combined figure is the whole reason this page exists, because it is almost never the number a veteran expects.

The critical point, and the one that generates more confusion than any other part of the benefits system, is that VA ratings do not add. Two 50 percent evaluations do not make 100 percent. Under 38 CFR 4.25 the ratings are treated as successive reductions of the veteran's remaining efficiency: the most severe condition is applied to a whole person, the next condition is applied only to whatever capacity is left, and so on down the list. The arithmetic is deliberately asymmetric, so a fifth 10 percent evaluation is worth far less than the first one, and a veteran can accumulate a long list of conditions and still sit at 70 percent.

Compensation then depends on that combined figure after it has been converted to a multiple of ten, and on the veteran's dependents. VA publishes a fresh rate table every December, indexed to the same cost-of-living adjustment that applies to Social Security benefits. This calculator implements the combined ratings arithmetic of 38 CFR 4.25, the bilateral factor of 38 CFR 4.26, and the published rate tables effective December 1, 2025, which were first payable in January 2026 and carry the 2.8 percent cost-of-living increase. It is an estimating tool: VA alone determines entitlement, evaluations and effective dates.

How to use the rating combiner and pay estimator

Enter one evaluation per row, using the whole percentages that appear on your rating decision. Most schedular evaluations are multiples of ten, so the rows accept values from 0 to 100 and warn you if a value falls outside that range. Rows left at zero are ignored, and the order you type them in does not matter because the calculator sorts them into descending order for you, exactly as 38 CFR 4.25(a) requires.

Tick the bilateral box on any evaluation that affects a paired extremity, meaning both upper extremities, both lower extremities, or paired skeletal muscles. The box does nothing unless at least two compensable evaluations are ticked, because 38 CFR 4.26(c) states the factor is not applicable unless there is a partial disability of compensable degree in each of two paired extremities. A single ticked row is reported back to you as ignored rather than silently dropped.

Next, describe your household. Mark whether you have a spouse, how many dependent children under 18 you claim, how many children over 18 are enrolled in a qualifying school program, and whether you have one or two dependent parents in your award. Aid and Attendance for a spouse and Special Monthly Compensation at level K are separate add-ons with their own published amounts; tick them only if VA has actually granted them. Dependent amounts are payable only from 30 percent upward, and the calculator states this explicitly whenever your combined rating lands at 10 or 20 percent.

The result panel reports the combined value exactly as it appears in Table I of 38 CFR 4.25, the converted rating used for payment, and the estimated monthly and annual amounts. Below it, a step-by-step breakdown shows every intermediate combination so you can reconcile the figure against your decision letter line by line, and a threshold analysis tells you the smallest single additional evaluation that would move you into the next payment bracket and what that bracket is worth. Use Copy shareable link to save or send the exact scenario; the link restores every input.

The 38 CFR 4.25 combined ratings formula in detail

Start from the idea of efficiency. A whole person is 100 percent efficient. A single evaluation of percent leaves a residual efficiency of

Formula: E_1 = 100 − A

A second evaluation cannot take anything from the capacity already lost, so it operates only on . The combined value of the pair is therefore the first evaluation plus that fraction of the remainder:

Formula: C = A + B × (100 − A) / 100

Table I of 38 CFR 4.25 is nothing more than this expression tabulated and rounded to whole percentage points, with halves adjusted upward. Writing that rounding explicitly, and keeping everything in integers so that no floating-point error can creep in, the calculator evaluates

Formula: C = ⌊ (100 A + B(100 − A) + 50) / 100 ⌋

The regulation's own worked illustrations confirm this reading. A 60 percent evaluation combined with a 40 percent evaluation gives 76; combining that 76 with a further 20 percent gives 80.8, which Table I records as 81. A 19 combined with a 50 gives 59.5, which Table I records as 60, demonstrating that halves round upward at the intermediate stage as well as at the final conversion.

For a list of evaluations the process simply repeats, each new evaluation acting on the efficiency that survives all the previous ones. Ignoring the intermediate rounding for a moment, the closed form is a product of survival factors:

Formula: C = 100 (1 − ∏ i = 1 n (1 − R_i / 100))

That product form explains the shape of the whole system: the combined value approaches 100 asymptotically and can never reach it from schedular evaluations below 100. It also shows why the calculator does not use the closed form directly. 38 CFR 4.25(a) requires each pairwise combination to be taken exactly as found in Table I, that is, rounded to a whole number before the next evaluation is combined, and those intermediate roundings can shift the answer by a point relative to the continuous product.

The last step, and the only one where the familiar multiples of ten appear, is the conversion required by 38 CFR 4.25(b). It is performed once per rating decision, after every disability has been combined:

Formula: R = 10 × ⌊ (C + 5) / 10 ⌋

The added 5 encodes the regulation's instruction that combined values ending in 5 are adjusted upward: 65 becomes 70, while 64 becomes 60 and 52 becomes 50. Because the conversion happens only once, a veteran cannot round at each stage and arrive at a higher figure, which is a common source of disagreement with a decision letter.

The bilateral factor formula under 38 CFR 4.26

Paired extremities receive special treatment because losing function on both sides is more disabling than the same losses on unrelated body systems. When compensable disabilities affect both arms, both legs, or paired skeletal muscles, 38 CFR 4.26 directs that those ratings be combined as usual and that 10 percent of the resulting value be added, not combined, before any further combination or conversion. If the paired evaluations combine to , the value carried forward is

Formula: V_b = round (1.1 × V_p)

The regulation's own example makes the mechanics concrete. Evaluations of 60, 20, 10 and 10 percent, where the two 10 percent evaluations are bilateral, first combine the pair to 19; adding 10 percent of 19 gives 20.9, which becomes 21. The order of severity is then 60, 21 and 20. The 60 and 21 combine to 68, the 68 and 20 combine to 74, and 74 converts to a 70 percent final degree of disability. Note that the bilateral group is treated as one disability for ordering purposes, which is why the 21 outranks the plain 20.

Two further rules matter. Paragraph (b) covers all four extremities: combine the four ratings in order of individual severity, then add 10 percent of the combined value. Paragraph (d), added in 2023, is a safeguard requiring that if including a bilateral disability in the bilateral calculation would produce a lower combined evaluation than leaving it out, it must be removed and combined separately so the veteran receives the most favourable outcome. This calculator computes the result both with and without the bilateral factor and reports the more favourable one, flagging when the two differ.

From combined rating to a dollar figure

Once the converted rating is known, the monthly payment is a table lookup plus a short list of published add-ons. VA structures its tables so that the basic rate already includes a spouse, up to one child, and up to two dependent parents; every additional child is a separate line item. Writing for the basic rate matching your dependent status, the estimate is

Formula: P = B + n_c a_c + n_s a_s + δ a_A + k × 139.87

Here is the number of children under 18 beyond the first, the number of children over 18 in a qualifying school program beyond the first if no younger child fills that slot, is 1 when a spouse receives Aid and Attendance, and is the number of Special Monthly Compensation level K awards, each worth 139.87 dollars a month. The annual figure is simply , since VA pays a level monthly amount.

Below 30 percent none of the dependent terms apply at all: the 10 percent and 20 percent rates are flat regardless of family size. That discontinuity is large. A veteran at 20 percent with a spouse and two children receives the same 356.66 dollars as a single veteran at 20 percent, while the same household at 30 percent receives 698.47 dollars.

The calculator carries the full published table, including the columns for one and two dependent parents and for a veteran with children but no spouse, so the estimate matches whichever row of the VA tables describes your household.

Worked example: bilateral knees, a back strain and tinnitus

Consider a veteran carrying four schedular evaluations: 40 percent for the right knee, 40 percent for the left knee, 20 percent for a lumbosacral strain and 10 percent for tinnitus. The knees are paired lower extremities, so both are marked bilateral. The household is a spouse and one dependent child under 18, with no dependent parents.

The bilateral pair is combined first. Forty combined with forty is . Ten percent of 64 is 6.4, and 64 plus 6.4 is 70.4, which becomes 70. That 70 is now a single disability for every remaining step.

Arranged by severity the list is 70, 20, 10. Seventy combined with twenty gives 76, since 20 percent of the 30 points of remaining efficiency is 6. Seventy-six combined with ten gives 78.4, recorded as 78. The single conversion required by 38 CFR 4.25(b) turns 78 into 80 percent, because 78 is nearer to 80 than to 70.

Had the knees not qualified for the bilateral factor, the same four evaluations would combine to 64, then 71, then 74, and 74 converts to 70 percent. The bilateral factor is therefore worth an entire payment bracket in this scenario. At the rates effective December 1, 2025, a veteran at 80 percent with a spouse and one child receives 2,406.15 dollars a month, against 2,074.45 dollars at 70 percent. The difference of 331.70 dollars a month is 3,980.40 dollars a year, from a rule that occupies one paragraph of the regulation.

If that same 80 percent veteran had three children under 18 rather than one, the estimate would start from the same 2,406.15 dollar basic rate, which already covers one child, and add 87.00 dollars for each of the two additional children, giving 2,580.15 dollars a month. Adding a spouse in receipt of Aid and Attendance would add a further 161.00 dollars at the 80 percent level.

Reading and interpreting your combined rating result

Two numbers come out of the calculation and they answer different questions. The combined value is the unconverted figure from Table I, and it is the number that matters when you are deciding whether to pursue another claim, because it tells you how far you are from the next threshold. The converted rating is the multiple of ten that appears on your decision letter and drives the payment. A veteran at a combined value of 74 and a veteran at 65 are both paid at 70 percent, but because the 80 percent bracket opens at a combined value of 75 the first is one point away and the second is ten, a very different prospect.

The threshold analysis in the result panel makes that concrete by testing each schedular evaluation from 10 to 100 percent and reporting the smallest one that would push the converted rating up a bracket, together with the monthly and annual difference. Because each new evaluation acts only on the shrinking remainder, the required evaluation grows quickly as the combined value rises. From a combined value of 74 a further 10 percent evaluation is enough; from 55 it takes a 30 percent evaluation to reach 70 percent.

Three thresholds are worth watching in particular. Thirty percent is where dependent allowances begin, so a step from 20 to 30 percent is worth more to a family than the bare rate table suggests. At 100 percent the schedular rate jumps by two thirds relative to 90 percent, from 2,362.30 dollars to 3,938.58 dollars for a veteran alone, which is why total disability based on individual unemployability, granted under 38 CFR 4.16 and paid at the 100 percent rate, is such a significant issue. Sixty percent for a single disability, or a combined 70 percent with one disability at 40 percent, is the usual schedular gateway to that unemployability consideration.

Limitations, assumptions and what this estimator does not decide

This tool models the rating arithmetic, not the adjudication. It cannot tell you what evaluation a condition deserves under the rating schedule, whether service connection is warranted, what effective date applies, or whether staged ratings are appropriate. Those are the parts of the process where the outcome is actually decided, and they depend on medical evidence rather than on percentages.

Several assumptions are built in and you should check that they hold for your case. Evaluations are taken as whole percentages exactly as VA assigned them. The bilateral factor is applied only when at least two ticked evaluations are compensable, per 38 CFR 4.26(c), and the calculator reports the more favourable of the results with and without the factor in the spirit of 38 CFR 4.26(d), but it does not enumerate every possible subset of bilateral disabilities. VA tables provide for one child in the basic rate, so where you have both younger children and school-age children over 18 the calculator fills that basic slot with a child under 18 when one exists.

Several real adjustments are outside the scope of the estimate. Special monthly compensation under 38 CFR 3.350 for loss of use, aid and attendance, or housebound status is not modelled beyond the flat level K award, and levels L through R can raise payments far above the schedular table. Temporary total evaluations for convalescence or hospitalisation, total disability based on individual unemployability, protected ratings, combined-degree conversions for pension purposes, and reductions for concurrent receipt of separation pay, severance pay or drill pay are all excluded. Amounts are also reduced by apportionment to a dependent, by VA debt recoupment, or by incarceration in excess of 60 days.

Finally, the rate table is time-limited by design. The figures on this page are the rates effective December 1, 2025 and payable from January 2026. VA is required to match the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment, so a new table takes effect each December and every dollar figure here should be re-checked against the current VA publication before it is relied on. VA determines actual entitlement; this page produces an estimate only.

Sources used for the formulas and rates

Combined ratings arithmetic and Table I: U.S. Government, 38 CFR 4.25, Combined ratings table. Bilateral factor: 38 CFR 4.26, Bilateral factor. Special monthly compensation criteria: 38 CFR 3.350. Payment amounts: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Current Veterans disability compensation rates, effective December 1, 2025 (page last updated December 2, 2025), and Current special monthly compensation rates for the SMC-K amount of 139.87 dollars. The 2.8 percent increase carried by the December 1, 2025 table follows the Social Security Administration announcement of a 2.8 percent benefit increase for 2026, dated October 24, 2025; VA states that it is required by law to match the percentage cost-of-living adjustment made to Social Security benefits.