Texas pays impairment income benefits on a fixed statutory formula, not a negotiated lump sum. Enter your average weekly wage and impairment rating to estimate what the formula pays, using the TDI-DWC rates for fiscal year 2026.
Texas does not do lump-sum "settlements" the way most states do. IIBs arrive as checks while they accrue; Texas Labor Code Section 408.005 bars settling unaccrued benefits for a lump sum. Rates shown use the TDI-DWC fiscal year 2026 maximum of $890 and minimum of $191 per week (benefit years starting October 1, 2025).
This page is educational, not legal advice. Texas workers compensation has its own vocabulary and its own math, and getting either wrong is expensive. For a dispute, talk to a licensed Texas workers comp attorney or the state's free Office of Injured Employee Counsel.
Texas does not settle workers comp claims the way other states do. There is no negotiated lump-sum check that closes your case. What you can estimate is your impairment income benefits: 3 weeks of pay for every percentage point of your impairment rating, at 70% of your average weekly wage, capped at $890 per week for benefit years beginning October 1, 2025, according to the Texas Department of Insurance, Division of Workers' Compensation (TDI-DWC).
If you searched for a Texas settlement amount and found pages describing clincher agreements or compromise-and-release deals, you were reading about some other state's system. Texas Labor Code Section 408.005 says a settlement may not pay unaccrued income benefits in a lump sum and may not limit your lifetime right to medical care for the injury. Every settlement also needs the workers compensation commissioner's signature. The insurance carrier cannot hand you a check to make the claim go away, and you cannot ask for one.
There is a single narrow exception. Under Section 408.128, an injured employee who has returned to work for at least three months, earning at least 80% of their average weekly wage, can ask to commute the remaining impairment income benefits into one payment. Take it and you permanently give up supplemental income benefits, which for higher ratings can be worth far more than the convenience of one check.
Texas is also the only state where private employers can skip workers comp entirely. TDI-DWC's 2024 biennial report to the legislature counted 24% of private-sector employers as non-subscribers, employing 13% of the Texas workforce. If your employer is one of them, nothing on this page applies to you: a non-subscriber injury claim is a lawsuit, not a comp claim, and the employer loses most of its usual legal defenses.
Impairment income benefits, IIBs in the paperwork, start the day after you reach maximum medical improvement. A doctor certified by TDI-DWC rates your permanent impairment as a whole-body percentage using the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, 4th edition. Each point buys three weeks of benefits. The weekly check is 70% of your average weekly wage. If no doctor certifies MMI earlier, you reach it by statute 104 weeks after income benefits begin to accrue.
Two guardrails apply, and both reset every October 1. For benefit years beginning October 1, 2025, TDI-DWC lists the state average weekly wage at $1,271.05, which sets the IIB maximum at $890 per week and the minimum at $191. Temporary income benefits, the checks you get while off work before MMI, cap higher at $1,271. A high earner's IIB rate flattens at $890 no matter how large the paycheck was.
Your average weekly wage is itself a computed number: the 13 weeks of gross earnings before the injury, divided by 13, including non-cash compensation such as employer-paid health premiums, per TDI-DWC's benefits guidance. Workers with more than one job can usually count wages from both. An AWW that leaves out a second job or the value of health coverage quietly shrinks every benefit downstream, so check the carrier's arithmetic before you trust anything built on it.
Take the calculator's defaults. A warehouse worker averaged $1,100 per week before a shoulder injury and reaches MMI with an 8% rating. Seventy percent of $1,100 is $770, under the $890 cap, so nothing gets clipped. Eight points times three weeks is 24 weeks. At $770 each, that comes to $18,480, paid out over roughly five and a half months.
Now give the same injury to someone earning $1,400 per week. Seventy percent would be $980, but the cap pulls it back to $890, so the same 24 weeks pays $21,360. The cap cost that worker $90 every week.
Here is the number worth memorizing: at the FY2026 cap, one rating point is worth $2,670 (three weeks at $890). A dispute that moves a rating from 8% to 10% is worth $5,340 to a capped worker. That is why the rating exam, and the designated-doctor process for challenging it, gets fought harder than anything else in a Texas claim. Our guide to impairment ratings covers how the exam works and what to do when you disagree with the result.
If your rating is 15% or higher, supplemental income benefits may follow. To qualify, per TDI-DWC: you have not returned to work, or you earn less than 80% of your pre-injury wage because of the injury, you did not commute your IIBs, and you are actively looking for work you can do. SIBs pay monthly, at 80% of the difference between 80% of your average weekly wage and what you now earn, and you requalify quarter by quarter. Same $890 weekly cap.
Below 15%, the income benefits end when the IIB weeks run out. Medical does not. Lifetime medical care for the compensable injury stays open in Texas, which is exactly the thing Section 408.005 stops anyone from buying out.
It trusts your two inputs. If the carrier calculated your AWW low, or the rating is still in dispute, the output inherits the error. It estimates IIBs only: temporary income benefits while you are off work follow a different formula (the lost wages calculator handles the general version), lifetime income benefits for catastrophic injuries are separate again, and medical never appears as a dollar figure here because Texas pays it as it happens instead of cashing it out. It also assumes a subscriber claim inside the DWC system, at current rates rather than the rates for an older injury year. For how other states handle the same math, see workers comp by state, and for the systems where a negotiated settlement actually exists, our explainer on settlement types.
The main settlement calculator models the scheduled-weeks approach most other states use, including medical costs and attorney fees.
There is no negotiated settlement pot to average. Texas pays impairment income benefits on a formula: 3 weeks per rating point at 70% of your average weekly wage, capped at $890 per week for fiscal year 2026. A 5% rating at the cap totals $13,350. A 15% rating at the cap totals $40,050. Wage and rating decide everything.
Generally no. Texas Labor Code Section 408.005 bars settlements that pay unaccrued benefits in a lump sum or cut off medical care. The one exception is Section 408.128: if you have returned to work for at least three months earning at least 80% of your average weekly wage, you can ask to commute remaining impairment income benefits into one payment. Doing so ends your eligibility for supplemental income benefits.
For injuries in benefit years starting October 1, 2025, TDI-DWC sets the maximum at $1,271 per week for temporary income benefits and $890 per week for impairment and supplemental income benefits. The minimum is $191. These reset every October 1.
A doctor certified by TDI-DWC assigns your rating at maximum medical improvement using the AMA Guides, 4th edition. Each percentage point pays three weeks of benefits at 70% of your average weekly wage, subject to the state cap. A 10% rating means 30 weeks of checks.