Your Effective Date: Where Back Pay Begins

For most claims, the VA sets the effective date at the later of two dates: the day it received your claim, or the day your entitlement arose. In practice, filing doesn't reach back before the condition existed, and having the condition for years doesn't reach back before you filed.

VA payments start on the first day of the month after the effective date. An effective date of April 10 means May is the first month paid.

Back pay is the gap between that start and the month your regular payments begin. A veteran with no dependents rated 30% receives $552.47 a month at 2026 rates, so a decision that lands a year after the effective date comes with roughly twelve months of that amount, adjusted for any cost-of-living changes in between.

An Intent to File (ITF) tells the VA you plan to claim compensation. It gives you a year to submit the complete claim, and if you make that deadline, the VA treats the claim as filed on the ITF date.

You can submit one:

• Online at VA.gov, using VA Form 21-0966
• Automatically, by starting a disability claim online while signed in to a verified VA.gov account
• By phone with the VA
• On paper, by mailing VA Form 21-0966, or in person
• With help from any of Wisconsin's 72 county or 11 tribal veterans service officers, or another accredited representative

Here is how it plays out. A veteran submits an ITF on February 3, spends the summer collecting records and a nexus letter, and files the full claim on November 20. If the VA grants it, the effective date can be February 3, and pay starts with March. Without the ITF, the date would be November 20, and those nine months would be gone.

The ITF covers the type of benefit, so you don't have to list conditions on it. And once you file the complete claim, that ITF is used up. Planning to add a condition months later? Submit a fresh ITF first.

Veterans who file soon after discharge get a special rule. If the VA receives your claim within one year of separation, the effective date for a directly service-connected condition can be the day after you separated.

Picture someone who separated on July 15. If the claim reaches the VA the following May, the effective date can be July 16, almost ten months earlier than the filing date. If it arrives in August, thirteen months out, the regular rule takes over and the date is generally the day the claim came in.

Still in uniform? The Benefits Delivery at Discharge program lets you file 180 to 90 days before separation, so the claim is already moving when you get out.

Increases follow their own rule. The effective date can be the earliest date the records show the condition got worse, as long as the VA receives your claim or ITF within one year of that date. If the worsening happened more than a year before you filed, the date falls back to the day the claim came in.

Say a private orthopedic note from seven months ago shows your knee bending noticeably less than it did at your last exam. File now, and that note can set the date. Wait six more months, and the note is over a year old, so the date generally falls back to whenever you file.

When a doctor documents a change, that's your cue to file. The rating increase page covers the rest.

A denial doesn't have to cost you your original date. Under the VA's decision review rules, the date survives if you keep the claim moving with a new review filed within one year of each VA decision. The VA calls this continuous pursuit. One exception on timing: an appeal to the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims has its own 120-day deadline, covered below.

• After an initial decision: a Supplemental Claim (VA Form 20-0995), a Higher-Level Review (20-0996), or a Board appeal (10182)
• After a Higher-Level Review: a Supplemental Claim or a Board appeal
• After a Board decision: a Supplemental Claim within one year, or an appeal to the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims within 120 days of the date on the Board decision. The Court's deadline is the short one, so don't wait out the year on that lane.
• After a court decision: a Supplemental Claim

Miss the one-year mark and file a Supplemental Claim later, and the effective date generally can't be earlier than the day that new claim arrives. A veteran denied in January who files new evidence the next December keeps the original date. Filing that same evidence after the one-year mark generally gives up the original date and the back pay tied to it. Our denied claims page covers choosing a lane.