VA rating calculator

A rating describes how much ability a disability takes away, so the second rating applies to what is left after the first. A 50 percent rating leaves 50 percent of your ability. A further 30 percent takes 30 percent of that 50, which is 15. The combined value is 65, and because 4.25(a) converts the final figure to the nearest multiple of ten with 5s going up, it pays as 70.

Three things trip people up, and all three are in the arithmetic above:

• Each step rounds. The combined value is read from a table of whole numbers, and the next rating combines with that rounded figure, "exactly as found in table I".
• The conversion to a multiple of ten happens once. It is the last step of the whole calculation, not something applied along the way. Rounding early inflates the result.
• Paired limbs get a bonus. Under 4.26 the ratings for both arms, both legs, or paired skeletal muscles combine with each other first, then 10 percent is added rather than combined.

A compensable disability in each of two paired extremities (4.26(c)). One bad knee is not bilateral, however much it affects you. Upper and lower extremities count as a whole, so a right thigh and a left foot are a pair (4.26(a)). Where leaving a disability out of the factor produces a better result, the VA leaves it out (4.26(d)), and this calculator tries every arrangement and keeps the most favourable one.

A total disability rating based on individual unemployability pays at the 100 percent rate while your schedular rating is lower. 38 CFR 4.16(a) sets a percentage threshold: one disability ratable at 60 percent or more, or one at 40 percent or more with a combined rating of 70 percent or more.

The part people miss is that several disabilities can count as one for that test. Disabilities of paired limbs, disabilities from a common cause or a single accident, and disabilities in a single body system are each treated as one disability. Three separate 30 percent ratings combine to 70 but leave nothing at 40. Group two of them under one body system and they count as 51 together, which clears the 40 percent test while the combined rating does not change at all. Use the body system field above to see that.

Meeting the threshold is not the same as qualifying. The VA also has to find that your service-connected disabilities prevent substantially gainful employment, and under 4.16(b) it can grant unemployability below the threshold. This page cannot tell you either way.

Service connection means the evidence establishes that an injury or disease resulting in disability was incurred during service, or existed before service and was made worse by it (3.303(a)). The VA is required to consider "all pertinent medical and lay evidence" and to read the law "under a broad and liberal interpretation".

Several routes exist. A condition can be shown directly from the evidence. It can be first diagnosed years after discharge and still be connected (3.303(d)). For a chronic condition shown in service, later flare-ups at any later date are connected unless something else clearly caused them (3.303(b)). For injuries incurred in combat, lay evidence alone is accepted as sufficient proof where it fits the circumstances of that service, even with no official record (3.304(d)). Some conditions are presumed connected for veterans with particular exposures or service, which removes the need to prove the link at all.

Lay evidence means statements, from you or from people who served with you, about what happened and what you have felt since. It is evidence. People discount it and should not.

The calculator is arithmetic applied to ratings the VA has already assigned. It does not decide what rating any condition should get, which is the part that actually determines your compensation, and it cannot see your evidence, your effective dates or your file. The VA's own decision governs.

Nothing you type into the calculator leaves your browser: that part is the regulation's arithmetic running on your device, with no server call and no logging. The code is public. The arithmetic is tested against all 684 cells of the printed table in 4.25 and every worked example in 4.25, 4.26 and 4.16.