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VA disability calculator

VA disability calculator

VA does not add ratings. It combines them, each one taken from what the ones before it leave, and rounds to ten only at the end. This works it the way the rating schedule does and shows every step.

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Disabilities

Enter each rating on your decision letter. Mark the ones on an arm or leg, or on one side of a paired trunk or neck muscle, so the bilateral factor can apply when both sides are rated.

RatingAffects

Add a disability at

Unemployability

Paid at the 100% rate for individual unemployabilityVA found your service-connected disabilities keep you from steady work (38 CFR 4.16)

Special monthly compensation

Only if your decision letter awards SMC. Enter the letter and the number of SMC-K awards it names; an SMC letter is paid in place of the rate for your combined rating.

SMC letterSMC-K awards

Dependents

Dependents add to the monthly payment only at a combined rating of 30% or more.

SpouseSpouse needs aid and attendanceNeeds another person's regular help, or lives in a nursing home

Dependent parentsChildren under 18 or disabled before 18Children in school, 18 to 23

Combined rating

10%

Combined value 10

Monthly payment

$180.42

$2,165.04 a year

How it was combined

Start with 1010

Monthly payment
Basic rate at 10%	$180.42

Rates effective December 1, 2025 · VA rate tables

How this is worked

Ratings are put in order of severity and combined with Table I of 38 CFR 4.25. Each combined value is kept as the whole number the table prints, and only the final value is rounded to the nearest ten, with a 5 rounding up.

When both arms, or both legs, have a compensable rating, those ratings are combined first, and 10% of that value is added under the bilateral factor in 38 CFR 4.26. If leaving one of them out of the factor would give a higher rating, it is left out, as 4.26(d) requires.

The payment is the basic monthly rate from the VA compensation tables effective December 1, 2025. A child 18 to 23 in school is paid the school amount in place of the child amount, under 38 U.S.C. 1115.

Individual unemployability pays the 100% rate. Special monthly compensation is paid from the VA SMC tables, with dependents at the 100% amounts and SMC-K limited as 38 CFR 3.350(a) requires. The calculator takes the SMC letter from your decision; it does not work out which letter a condition earns. A child who became permanently unable to support themselves before 18 is paid as a child under 18.

Paired trunk or neck muscles (38 CFR 4.73, muscle groups XIX to XXIII) take the bilateral factor as a group of their own. VA has not published whether they join the arm and leg group, so this follows the rule as written.

An estimate for reference, not a VA decision. Your decision letter is the record of your rating.