TDIU: 7 questions veterans ask about VA unemployability

TDIU stands for Total Disability based on Individual Unemployability. It lets VA pay you at the 100 percent rate even when your schedular rating is lower, if your service-connected disabilities keep you from securing or following a substantially gainful occupation.

It isn't a 100 percent rating on paper. It's a way of being paid at that level because of what your conditions do to your ability to work.

The regulation sets two routes. You need either:

For example, a 50 percent rating and a 40 percent rating combine to 70 percent, and one of them is at 40, so that pairing meets the second route. VA's combined ratings are not simple addition, which is why 50 plus 40 lands at 70 and not 90.

Yes. For the 60 percent or 40 percent test, the regulation treats certain groups as a single disability:

• Disabilities of one or both arms, or one or both legs
• Disabilities from a common cause or a single accident
• Disabilities affecting a single body system, such as orthopedic or neuropsychiatric
• Multiple injuries incurred in action
• Multiple disabilities incurred as a prisoner of war

This matters for veterans whose back, hips and knees are each rated at 20 or 30 percent. Together they may count as one orthopedic disability for the threshold.

Possibly. The line isn't "any job." It's whether you can hold substantially gainful employment. Marginal employment doesn't count against you.

VA generally treats work as marginal when your earned income for the year is at or below the Census Bureau's poverty threshold for one person. That number changes every year, so check the current figure. Work can also be marginal when you earn more than that, on a facts-found basis, such as a job in a protected environment like a family business or sheltered workshop. VA also looks at the nature of the job and why it ended.

Not toward the percentages, and they shouldn't hurt you either. The regulation says non-service-connected disabilities are disregarded once the rating thresholds are met. The question is what your service-connected conditions do to your ability to work.

The same regulation says it is VA policy that veterans who can't hold a substantially gainful job because of service-connected disabilities should be rated totally disabled. Raters are told to send those cases up for extra-schedular consideration, with a full statement of your disabilities, work history, education and training.

That path is harder, and it leans on the record. A clear work history and medical evidence of what you can't do on the job matter even more.

VA.gov lists two forms: VA Form 21-8940, your application, and VA Form 21-4192, which your most recent employer completes. Both can be sent online or by mail.

Strong claims usually show, in specifics, how the conditions limit sustained work: sitting or standing through a shift, concentrating, getting along with others, and attendance. Treatment records and a physician's opinion on those functional limits can carry more weight than a general statement. Nothing here guarantees a result. VA makes the decision.