You can use this Back Pay Calculator to get an estimate of how much back pay you’ll get from the VA when your claim is granted. It is just an estimate and the VA can change rules in a single senate hearing, but this can give you a good guess.
How Retroactive Pay is Calculated for VA Disability
When you are granted a rating, the VA will assign you an effective date. That date is usually whenever you started applying for VA disability. Sometimes the VA can get that wrong, and we help our clients appeal for an earlier effective date often.
Put your first effective date in the first box of the calculator. Then choose the percentage of that rating. You can figure out combined VA ratings using our combined ratings calculator. On this calculator, put in the whole amount of your VA rating and any applicable SMC ratings.
Choose the right choice for any dependents, if necessary, and fill out the number of children you have that are dependents. Check the box if your spouse is also receiving Aid and Assistance.
Use the small plus sign in the grey circle to add on any additional ratings. This would be used if you got a rating for PTSD at 10%, then 2 years later got an additional rating for migraines at 30%.
Continue adding your conditions until you get to an Ending Date. At that point, fill in the date that those ratings ended.
In the next box, you can copy all prior ratings (and then just edit the dates) or you can begin filling in new ratings and new effective dates. If your PTSD went from 10% to 70%, you’d change your rating to 70% and put in your new effective date.
Keep going until you’ve filled in all of your ratings and date ranges and press the big green button that says “Calculate Back Pay.”
How Much Back Pay Will You Get?
You’ll get three numbers up on your screen for your answer.
Prior Compensation
This is how much you’ve already been paid in the past for your VA disability. If you’ve had a rating and already been receiving benefits, this is how much you’ve received from the VA over time.
Revised Compensation
This is the new amount of back pay that you should have received. If you had the original rating for the whole time, this is the total amount of money that the VA should have paid you.
Difference
This is the estimate of the amount that the VA now owes you. With your revised back pay minus what they already gave you, you get your total back pay. If you work with a VA disability lawyer, they are permitted by law to charge you up to 30% of that for their fees. At Woods and Woods, The Veterans Firm, we only charge you 20% of this amount after we win. We pay for all of the attorneys’ work, doctor statements, and our entire VA disability team while we work on your claim.
Your future benefits won’t be charged. We pay our staff of over 100 employees with the fees from the cases we win, so we have real skin in the game. We never delay your case to make more back pay. We want to move your case through as fast as the VA will let us so we can help more veterans!
View and Print the Details from our VA Disability Back Pay Calculator
If you press the little grey button at the bottom that says “View Calculation Details” you’ll see how your back pay was computed. You can print this out for future reference. You can also print it out to check and see how it compares once you win your claim.
If you want to be totally overwhelmed with the data tables for calculating your VA disability back pay, click the grey “View Rating Tables” button. We use that for internal use here at Woods and Woods, The Veterans Firm. If you want to see behind the scenes, we make that info transparent and available to you too.
