How Do You Calculate VA Disability Back Pay?

Back pay, also known as retro benefits, are tax-free monetary benefits that are paid to veterans who suffer disabilities that resulted from or were aggravated by active military service. They cover the period during which the veteran should have received benefits while his or her case was being evaluated by the VA. In other words, VA disability back pay is payment for the time (weeks, months, or years) between a veteran’s date of eligibility and the VA’s rating decision for that vet. The rating decision is a percentage figure that is assigned to vets by the VA in proportion to the extent of their disabilities.

Due to the number of claimants, as well as administrative, legal, and processing delays of claims, it can take months or even years for eligible veterans to receive their benefits.

In general, benefits are paid out using the date that the claim was filed as the start date of benefits.

However, the claim date can be - and often is - months or years before the claim itself is actually won. Once a claim is accepted, however, a new monthly rate is provisioned for the veteran, but the VA is also responsible for back pay or retro payments that go all the way back to the original date of the filing of the claim.

Back-Dating Benefits

The first question that generally comes to mind when it comes to retro pay is, how far back will the benefits go?

Benefits are usually calculated from the date that an accepted claim was filed. It can happen, however, that the date of a medical exam or other procedure is accepted as the starting date of benefits, but this only happens if it can be substantiated that that was the date at which the disability or injury that is being compensated began or was identified.

In any case, eligibility for back pay is usually determined as follows:

1. If a disability claim is submitted within one year of the vet’s date of separation, the date of eligibility for back pay is the date of separation.
2. If a disability claim is submitted more than a year after the vet’s date of separation, then the date of eligibility for back pay will be the first day of the month after the VA receives the claim.

Calculating Benefits

A few things must be considered before we can calculate benefits. These are:

• Was a rating already assigned?
• When was it assigned?
• Have any life changes, such as a change in dependents, occurred since?

Cost Of Living Adjustments (COLA), marriages and divorces, having a child or having a child grow old enough to no longer qualify as a dependent, and other factors are considered when arriving at the correct rate at which benefits are paid.

Let’s look at an example to better understand how this happens in practice.

Consider someone who applied for benefits 11 months after being separated from the military, and assume that it takes the VA a year to assign a rating decision for them.

In this case, once the claim is accepted, the vet receives back pay for the entire 23 months between his or her separation date and the date at which he or she received his or her rating decision.

Consider, now, that the vet submitted a claim 14 months after separating from the military, and that the VA took the same 12 months to reach a rating decision. In this case, the vet will only receive 12 months of VA back pay; the 14 months they could have received back pay for if they had submitted their claim within the one-year separation period would be lost.

Other Changes and Seeking Help

The only other time that back pay may kick in or change is if Congress changes the rating rules that govern specific disabilities. To learn more about these rules or to learn more about back pay and VA benefits in general, contact an attorney’s office for a private consultation.