Reading Your Combined Rating on a VA Rating Decision Letter

A rating decision usually arrives as a packet rather than a single page. Four parts matter for reading a combined rating.

The decision itself is the short list near the front. It states what was granted, what was denied, and at what percentage. This is the part most people read and stop.

The evidence list names what VA looked at: service records, treatment records, examination reports, statements, and dates for each. It decides nothing on its own, but it is the fastest way to see whether something a veteran sent in actually reached the file.

The reasons for decision explain, condition by condition, why each percentage was assigned. It generally quotes the criteria used and points at the findings in the record that met or did not meet them.

The codesheet is the coded page at the back, and it is the one that matters most for the math. It lists each service-connected condition with its diagnostic code, its evaluation, and its effective date, and it carries the combined evaluation. Formatting varies by office and by year, so a particular letter may head these sections differently or fold two of them together. The coded list at the back is the reliable place to look.

Because VA does not add them. It combines them, under 38 CFR 4.25, and combining produces a smaller number than adding in every case except one where a single evaluation stands alone.

The regulation applies each successive evaluation to what is left of the whole person rather than to the whole person again. VA's own explainer calls this the whole person theory and gives the reason plainly: a person cannot be more than 100 percent able-bodied, so the combined figure cannot pass 100.

This is the single most common misreading of a decision letter, and it is worth being blunt about it. A decision listing evaluations of 40, 20 and 10 has not made an error when the combined evaluation reads 60. Added, those come to 70. Combined under 4.25, they come to a value of 57, and 57 converts to 60.

The table itself makes the point in miniature. Table I in 38 CFR 4.25 carries a note that 10 combined with 10 is 19, not 20.

An individual evaluation sits next to one condition. It comes from the rating criteria in 38 CFR part 4 applied to what the record shows about that condition, and it is the number the reasons-for-decision section explains.

The combined evaluation is one number for the whole set of service-connected conditions. It is the output of 38 CFR 4.25 run across all of the individual evaluations, and it is the number the compensation rate table is read at.

Only the combined evaluation determines the monthly rate. No individual evaluation is paid on its own, which is why a decision granting a new condition can leave the payment unchanged.

Because evaluations carry effective dates, and those dates are frequently different from one another. VA defines an effective date as the day a veteran can start getting disability benefits.

When the conditions in one decision take effect on different days, the combined evaluation is not a single figure. It is a figure per date. A decision can therefore state, for example, a combined evaluation from one date and a different combined evaluation from a later date, and both statements are correct.

This is where most self-checks go wrong. Someone lists every percentage on the codesheet, combines them, and gets a result that does not match the combined line they are looking at, because the combined line they are looking at belongs to an earlier date and does not include all of the evaluations on the page. Match the date first, then combine only the evaluations in effect on that date.

It is the four-digit number identifying which set of rating criteria in 38 CFR part 4 was applied to that condition. What each code covers, and how the criteria inside it work, is a separate subject with its own pages.

For checking a combined rating, the code is useful only as a label. It tells you which line on the codesheet is which, and it lets you match a line to the paragraph in the reasons for decision that explains it.

Start on the codesheet rather than the front page, and work in this order.

Write down every service-connected evaluation with its effective date. Then pick one date and keep only the evaluations in effect on that date. This is the step that gets skipped.

Note anything marked bilateral. Under 38 CFR 4.26 the two sides are combined as usual and then 10 percent of that value is added, not combined, before the result goes on to be combined with anything else. It only applies where there is partial disability of compensable degree in each of two paired extremities or paired skeletal muscles.

Put the remaining evaluations in order, greatest first. 38 CFR 4.25 requires it: the disabilities are arranged in the exact order of their severity, beginning with the greatest, and then combined using Table I from there.

Combine them one at a time, carrying the running value forward. Then convert once, at the very end. 38 CFR 4.25(b) is explicit about the sequence: 'The conversion to the nearest degree divisible by 10 will be done only once per rating decision, will follow the combining of all disabilities, and will be the last procedure in determining the combined degree of disability.' A value ending in 5 is adjusted upward, so 65 becomes 70.

The calculator at /lm/math does the combining and shows the working step by step, so the math can be compared against the letter line by line. The method itself is set out on the pillar page linked below.

Check the boring explanations first, because they account for most mismatches.

The most common one is the effective date. If the combined line and the evaluations being combined do not belong to the same date, they will not agree, and neither figure is wrong.

The second is a missed evaluation. A codesheet can run onto a second page, and a non-compensable evaluation at 0 percent is easy to skip over. A 0 percent evaluation changes nothing in the combining, but seeing it accounted for confirms the list is complete.

The third is the bilateral factor at 38 CFR 4.26, which adds a step most people leave out and shifts the result upward when it applies.

The fourth is the conversion rule. Converting partway through, rather than once at the end as 4.25(b) requires, produces a different answer than VA's.

If the numbers still do not reconcile after all four, that is a question for a person who can read the actual file. A free accredited Veterans Service Organization representative can do that. VSO representatives are accredited, representation through a recognized VSO costs nothing, and VA maintains its own directory of them.

VA publishes it in the veteran's own account. On the disability rating page at VA.gov, VA states: 'You'll see your combined disability rating and a list of your individual disability ratings.'

That view is a useful cross-check against a paper decision, particularly an older one, because a combined rating changes whenever a later decision changes any evaluation feeding into it. A letter from three years ago is accurate for the date it was written and nothing more.

It explains a document. It does not assess anyone's decision, and no page can say whether a particular evaluation is correct, because that depends on medical records this page has never seen and on criteria applied to them.

Checking the combining math is a narrow, mechanical test. It confirms whether the individual evaluations on a codesheet produce the combined evaluation printed there. It says nothing about whether those individual evaluations reflect what the medical record shows, which is a different question entirely and the one a free accredited VSO representative is there to look at with a veteran.