At 100 Percent — Everything That Comes With It

Three things that are not the same thing

Most charts blur these. The benefits are different.

• 100 percent schedular — VA has rated your service-connected conditions at a combined 100 percent under the rating schedule.
• Individual Unemployability (TDIU) — you are rated below 100 percent but VA pays you at the 100 percent rate, because your service-connected conditions keep you from holding steady work. The usual thresholds: one service-connected disability rated 60 percent or more, or two or more with at least one at 40 percent and a combined 70 percent. Below those numbers you can still be considered on an extraschedular basis — ask, do not assume you are out. VA's unemployability page.
• Permanent and Total (P&T) — a separate decision that your total rating is not expected to improve. A 100 percent rating is not automatically permanent. P&T is the hinge that opens CHAMPVA and Chapter 35 for your Family.

Compensation, and what moves it

• It is tax-free. You do not include VA disability compensation in your gross income. IRS guidance for veterans.
• It goes up most years — not every year. The VA increase matches the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment. In years when that adjustment was zero there was no increase. That happened for 2009, 2010 and 2015.
• Dependents raise the payment. Eligible dependents are a spouse, unmarried children under 18 (or under 23 and in school, or permanently incapable of self-support), and a dependent parent.
• Aid and attendance for an eligible spouse adds more.

Above 100 percent — and what housebound really requires

There is money above the 100 percent rate. It has its own name and its own test.

• Special Monthly Compensation (SMC) is the mechanism that pays above the 100 percent rate — for loss or loss of use, for housebound status, and for aid and attendance. If nobody ever said the letters SMC to you, that is the term to bring to VA.

What you pay at 100 percent — and the one exception

• You are placed in Priority Group 1. Priority groups.
• No copay for VA outpatient care, inpatient care, or medications. At 10 percent or higher there is no copay for outpatient or inpatient care. In Priority Group 1 there is no copay for any medication.
• No copay for extended or nursing-home care when you have a compensable service-connected disability.
• The exception — urgent care. Your first three urgent care visits in a calendar year are free. After that it is $30 a visit. Current figures are on VA's copay rates page.
• Community care when you meet VA's eligibility standards. Community care.

Class IV dental — who actually gets it

• Any needed dental treatment if your service-connected disabilities are rated 100 percent by schedular evaluation, or you are paid at the 100 percent rate because of Individual Unemployability. If you hold TDIU, this is yours — a page headed "100 percent" can make you think otherwise.
• A temporary 100 percent rating for hospitalization or convalescence is not schedular 100 percent and does not qualify for Class IV.
• It is not automatic. You have to enroll in VA dental.

CHAMPVA and Chapter 35 turn on Permanent and Total

Not on 100 percent. This is where Families lose years.

• CHAMPVA — cost-shared health coverage for your spouse and dependent children, not for you. It requires VA to have rated you permanently and totally disabled from a service-connected disability. A 100 percent rating that is not permanent does not qualify your Family. Anyone eligible for or enrolled in TRICARE cannot use CHAMPVA — they use TRICARE. CHAMPVA is cost-sharing: VA pays part, you pay part. CHAMPVA.
• Survivors' and Dependents' Educational Assistance (DEA, Chapter 35) — school, trade school, certifications and apprenticeships for your spouse and children. Same gate: permanent and total. Chapter 35 also opens if the veteran died from a service-connected disability, died while rated permanently and totally disabled, or is missing or captured for more than 90 days.
• Chapter 35 time limits. For a qualifying event on or after August 1, 2023 there is no time limit. Before that date, generally 10 years for a spouse and 8 years before age 26 for a child. Chapter 35.
• Special restorative training — a real, current part of Chapter 35 that almost nobody names. VA may prescribe it where it is needed to overcome or lessen the effects of a physical or mental disability, so that an eligible child, spouse or surviving spouse can pursue a program of education. The rule is 38 CFR 21.3300 (38 U.S.C. 3540–3543). If your dependent has a disability of their own, ask for it by that name.

Federal hiring and VR&E

• 10-point preference. A compensable service-connected disability gets you 10 points added to a passing exam score. At 30 percent or more you are in category CPS and placed at the top of the register.
• The 30 Percent or More Disabled Veteran appointing authority. A veteran with a compensable rating of 30 percent or more is eligible for noncompetitive appointment under this authority. Ask a federal hiring official about it by that exact name. OPM's veterans guide.
• "Direct hire authority" is not this. It is a separate government-wide shortage and critical-need mechanism, not a veterans benefit. If you go looking for it you will be sent the wrong way.
• Veteran Readiness and Employment (VR&E, Chapter 31) — the current name. It has not been called Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment since 2020. It needs a service-connected rating of at least 10 percent and a service-connected barrier to employment. At 10 percent you need a serious employment handicap; at 20 percent or more, an employment handicap.

Your rating can be reduced. Here is what protects it.

• VA cannot reduce a total rating, absent clear error, without an examination showing material improvement in your physical or mental condition under ordinary working conditions. 38 CFR 3.343.
• If your rating is based on Individual Unemployability, going back to work does not by itself cost you the rating unless you hold the job 12 consecutive months.
• Any evaluation continuously in effect for 20 years or more cannot be dropped below that level except on a showing that it was obtained by fraud. 38 CFR 3.951(b).

The ones people never hear about

• VALife — the clock starts when you apply. Guaranteed-acceptance whole life, up to $40,000 in $10,000 increments, for any veteran with a service-connected rating, even 0 percent. Full coverage begins 2 years after you apply. If you die inside those two years your beneficiaries get the premiums you paid plus interest, not the face amount. Under 81 there is no deadline to apply — but every month you wait is a month the clock is not running. At 81 or older you must have applied for compensation before turning 81 and must apply within 2 years of being notified of your rating. VALife.
• Annual clothing allowance — paid if a service-connected prosthetic or orthopedic device, or a service-connected skin medication, damages your clothing. VA Form 10-8678. You must qualify by August 1 to be paid that year; payments issue September 1 through October 31. Miss August 1 and you wait a full year. If you were paid in 2022 or 2023 you no longer have to reapply each year for that same allowance. Clothing allowance.
• Student loan discharge. Total and Permanent Disability discharge of federal student loans and TEACH Grant service obligations, on a VA determination that your service-connected disability is 100 percent disabling or that you are totally disabled based on individual unemployability. Federal Student Aid matches records with VA quarterly and mails a letter — most veterans do not need to apply. If no letter comes, apply directly. A discharge for total and permanent disability does not create a federal tax liability. Student loan discharge.
• Automobile allowance — VA Form 21-4502, for certain qualifying losses. Ask about it.

Home loan fee and the adaptation grants

• VA funding fee exemption — broader than most pages say. You are exempt if any of these apply: you receive VA compensation for a service-connected disability; you are eligible for compensation but receive retirement or active-duty pay instead; you receive Dependency and Indemnity Compensation as a surviving spouse; you are a service member with a proposed or memorandum rating before your closing date from a pre-discharge claim; or you are active duty with evidence of a Purple Heart on or before closing.
• Refund — and its limit. You may be eligible for a refund of a funding fee you already paid if you are later awarded compensation, and the effective date is retroactive to before your loan closing date. If the proposed or memorandum rating comes after closing, you still pay the fee and there is no refund on that basis. Funding fee and closing costs.
• A 100 percent rating by itself does not qualify you for a housing grant. These require specific losses. Specially Adapted Housing (SAH) — loss or loss of use of more than one limb; loss or loss of use of a lower leg with residuals of an organic disease or injury; blindness in both eyes with 20/200 acuity or less, by itself, with no limb loss required; certain severe burns; or loss or loss of use of one lower extremity after September 11, 2001 that prevents walking without assistive devices (capped at 120 veterans a fiscal year).
• Special Home Adaptation (SHA) is the separate, smaller grant — loss or loss of use of both hands, certain severe burns, or certain respiratory or breathing injuries. Temporary Residence Adaptation helps if you live in a Family member's home.
• Apply on VA Form 26-4555. The grant can be used up to 6 times over your lifetime. Ceilings change every October 1 — current amounts are here.

Two concurrent-receipt programs, not one

If you retired from the military, this is money that may be sitting there.

• CRDP — Concurrent Retirement and Disability Pay. Requires a VA rating of 50 percent or more and entitlement to military retired pay. It is automatic. CRDP at DFAS.
• CRSC — Combat-Related Special Compensation. Requires military retired pay and a VA rating of at least 10 percent, but the disability must be combat-related: armed conflict, hazardous duty, an instrumentality of war, or simulated war. It is tax-free, and you must apply through your service branch — it does not come to you. CRSC at DFAS. DFAS: 800-321-1080.
• If you never retired from the military, neither program applies to you. That is not the end of the road — your compensation is unaffected, and the rest of this page still stands.

Commissary, exchange and MWR

• These privileges go to any veteran with a VA service-connected disability rating who was honorably discharged — not only at 100 percent. No application is required.
• In person, the gate wants a Veteran Health Identification Card (VHIC) showing your eligibility status, or a VA letter with a passport or driver's license. Getting a VHIC means enrolling in VA health care first. Without it you get turned around at the gate.
• Online exchange shopping is open to every honorably discharged veteran, with no disability rating required at all.
• Family access is limited. A living disabled veteran's spouse and children are not granted access on his status. The Family categories that do qualify are unmarried surviving spouses, a veteran's VA-designated primary Family caregiver with a VA caregiver patronage letter, and dependents or survivors of eligible service members. VA's page on these privileges.

DIC and burial — the rules that decide the money

• Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) does not flow automatically from a 100 percent rating. A surviving spouse qualifies if the veteran died from a service-connected illness or injury, or if the veteran held a totally disabling service-connected rating (including individual unemployability) for at least 10 continuous years before death, or since discharge and at least 5 years before death, or at least 1 year before death if a former prisoner of war. That 10-year clock is why survivors get denied. DIC.
• DIC adds an amount for each eligible child under 18, an amount if the veteran was rated totally disabling for the 8 full years before death and you were married those same 8 years, and a transitional benefit for the first 2 years after death. Current amounts: survivor rate table.

Deadlines, and who is allowed to charge you

• Higher-Level Review — one year from the decision.
• Board Appeal — one year from the decision.
• Supplemental Claim — no deadline.
• Contested claim — 60 days, Board only.