The published gap between the 90 % rate and the 100 % rate is $1,576.28 a month — $18,915 a year, on VA's own table. Same man, same injuries; one of them knew the rule. Five volumes, 515 pages, every regulation quoted with its section number. And one correction in here earns the $47 back inside the first month: a spouse missing from your award at 70 % is $153.00 a month, and putting that right needs no new rating decision at all.
The Library
The VA publishes all of it — in regulations, in rate tables, in its own manuals. Public, and never once explained to the man it belongs to. Nobody was ever given that job. This is that job, done.
Volume I112 pp
Volume II107 pp
Volume III98 pp
Volume IV97 pp
Volume V101 pp
In every volume
Five PDFs · 515 pages · 2026 Edition
The arithmetic that decides your percentage. The routes to the hundred per cent rate that do not need a hundred per cent rating. The claims where the connection is already conceded. The dates that decide how much is paid. And what to do when a decision goes against you. Eighty-two chapters, each closing in a checklist you can work from at the kitchen table.
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The Math
Pull out your rating decision. These are the VA's own published monthly rates for a veteran with no dependants, from the table in effect since the first of December. Nothing here is projected or estimated.
Combining rarely reaches a hundred. At ninety per cent only ten per cent of efficiency remains, so each further rating moves the total less than the last.
Source: va.gov, veteran compensation rates, effective 1 December 2025 · veteran alone, no dependants · full tables in Volume I, chapter seven
The difference between those two rows. The largest single step anywhere in the rating schedule, and the only one worth more than an entire 70 % payment.
What it pays back
Everything above depends on VA granting something. This does not. From 30 % upward your rate depends on who VA thinks lives in your house — and that record goes stale quietly. If a spouse is missing from your award, you are being underpaid today, and correcting it is a form, not a claim.
The difference between the veteran-alone rate and the with-spouse rate, from the same table · va.gov, effective 1 December 2025 · Volume I chapter seven, Volume IV chapter ten
At 70 % that is the $47 back in nine days. At 30 % it is the $47 back inside the first month. If the record is already correct, this one is not for you — and the other four volumes still are.
The second thing that pays for itself immediately is what the last chapter tells you not to do: never pay anybody a percentage of your back pay. An accredited VSO does all of this free. Twenty per cent of a single year of retroactive pay at 70 % is $4,340. At 100 % it is $9,452.
What this is not. It is not a promise that you will reach a hundred, and I am not telling you that you qualify for anything — I cannot see your file, and nobody honest would say otherwise from a web page. It is the published distance between two rows, and the rules that govern which row you are on.
What's Inside
Eighty-two chapters, in the order a claim actually moves. Every chapter ends in a one-page checklist you can work from at the kitchen table.
Volume I16 chapters
Volume II19 chapters
Volume III19 chapters
Volume IV19 chapters
Volume V20 chapters
Across the set
The Receipts
Most books in this subject ask for trust. This one prints the section number beside every claim, so you can go and read it yourself. Three examples of what that looks like on the page.
“A disability which has been continuously rated at or above any evaluation of disability for 20 or more years … will not be reduced to less than such evaluation except upon a showing that such rating was based on fraud.”
38 CFR 3.951(b) · protection of ratings“if there are two or more disabilities, there shall be at least one disability ratable at 40 percent or more, and sufficient additional disability to bring the combined rating to 70 percent or more”
38 CFR 4.16(a) · the unemployability threshold“If VA receives a complete application form … within 1 year of receipt of the intent to file a claim, VA will consider the complete claim filed as of the date the intent to file a claim was received.”
38 CFR 3.155 · the form that protects a yearThat is the whole method. Eighty-two chapters of it. If a rule is in the library, its source is printed next to it — and if I could not verify something, it is not in there at all.
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Instant access — five PDFs in your inbox within 60 seconds of payment. Read on any phone, tablet or computer. Print at the kitchen table if you want. 7-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked — if it is not for you, email and the $47 comes back the same day.
Five illustrated PDFs · 515 pages · 2026 Edition
Eighty-two chapters on ratings, unemployability, presumptives, secondaries, effective dates, back pay and appeals — with every regulation quoted, its section number printed beside it, and a checklist closing every chapter. Read the volume you need. Ignore the ones you do not.
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Before you buy anything from me or from anybody else: an accredited Veterans Service Officer will file your claim for you, for nothing. They are free, they are accredited, and there is one in every state — your county veterans service office, or one of the large service organisations.
Never pay anyone a percentage of your back pay. This library exists to make you a better-informed client of that free help, not to replace it. The last chapter of Volume V says so at length.
FAQ
No book can tell you that, and anybody promising it is lying to you. What this does is explain how ratings combine, what the thresholds actually say, and which claims commonly go unfiled — so that when you sit down with a VSO you understand your own file. The decision is the VA's and always will be.
That is most of the audience. Whole volumes are about what a rating you already hold can open: secondary conditions, the effective date, being paid at the hundred per cent rate without the rating, and the protections that attach at five, ten and twenty years.
No. It is general education about published regulation. I am not an attorney and I do not work for the VA. Anything specific to your file belongs with an accredited VSO, and the library points you at them in every volume.
Every rate carries the table and the effective date it came from, and every rule carries its CFR section. Rates change on 1 December each year. Buyers get the updated edition free.
There is one correction in here that needs no VA decision at all. From 30 % upward your rate depends on the dependants VA has on file, and that record goes stale without anybody telling you. A spouse missing from the award is $65.00 a month at 30 %, $153.00 at 70 %, $219.59 at 100 % — and correcting it is a form, not a claim. If your record is already right, that one is not for you. The honest answer is that no book can promise you money out of a system where every decision is VA's. What this one does is make sure you are not leaving anything on the table that is already yours.
Because rates change every December. With five, only Volume I needs revising each year, and you are not re-downloading five hundred pages to get one new table.
Email me within seven days and I will refund it the same day. You do not have to explain why and there is no form to fill in.
Last call
$47 once. Instant access. 7-day money-back guarantee. Five volumes, 515 pages, every regulation quoted with its section number. Free updates for the life of the edition.
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