Disability compensation for veterans is not subject to federal or state income tax. About 80 percent of veterans receive their VA benefits by direct deposit, which VA recommends for security reasons.
Veterans are rated at increments of 10 percent reflecting degree of disability. As federal regulations summarize the underlying principle, “The percentage ratings represent as far as can practicably be determined the average impairment in earning capacity resulting from such diseases and injuries and their residual conditions.”
The largest category of veterans on the compensation scale is at 10 percent disability ($117 per month), with 784,000 veterans at this rate at the beginning of fiscal year 2008 among the total 2.8 million veterans receiving disability compensation.
The criteria for rating the severity of various disabilities are available online at this link. As medical knowledge, laws and procedures change, VA regularly publishes proposed changes to these criteria in the Federal Register for public comment before a final regulation is adopted.
Where a veteran has more than one disability, the percentages are not simply added together to produce a new rating. Instead, a formula described in federal regulations calculates the overall rating.
A veteran may be rated at zero percent, meaning there is evidence of the service-connected condition, but it does not impair the veteran. An example is a minor scar. This zero percent rating, though not compensable, can be beneficial, since it may raise the veteran’s priority in other VA programs such as health care eligibility. In addition, it may be reviewed for a higher rating if the condition worsens.
A veteran may have a number of disabilities individually evaluated as zero percent which produce a 10 percent combined disability and entitle the veteran to disability compensation. At the beginning of fiscal year 2008, there were more than 13,190 veterans in the category of “compensable zero” ratings.
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