DWC046 - Request to Accelerate Impairment Income Benefits
Asking to Accelerate Your IIBs
The DWC046 asks the state to pay your impairment income benefits in larger checks over fewer weeks. It does not add a dollar. This page explains what the form asks, who decides, and what acceleration truly costs.
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What this form is
The DWC046, Request to Accelerate Impairment Income Benefits, asks the Division of Workers' Compensation, called the DWC, to increase the weekly amount of your impairment income benefits and reduce the number of weeks they are paid. Impairment income benefits, called IIBs, are the checks paid for permanent damage after your recovery levels off; Impairment Income Benefits (IIBs) in Texas Workers' Compensation Claims explains how they are earned and calculated. The form exists for financial hardship: a worker facing rent, a car payment, or a medical bill that the normal weekly check cannot cover.
Understand the arithmetic before anything else. Acceleration changes the schedule, not the total. The same money arrives in bigger checks, and then it stops sooner.
What the form asks
The form asks you to describe your hardship and to state the higher weekly amount you are requesting. The law caps the increase: the accelerated check cannot exceed an amount based on 85 percent of your average weekly wage, called your AWW, which is the wage figure your claim is built on. IIBs normally pay 70 percent of your AWW, so acceleration can raise the weekly check only within that range. The form gives you no worksheet for the 85 percent figure; you must calculate it, and a wrong number invites delay or denial. The income benefits calculator on this site can produce the starting figures.
Who decides
The DWC decides, not the carrier, which is the insurance company paying benefits on your claim. If the DWC approves, both you and the carrier receive an order, and the carrier must begin paying the increased amount within seven days of receiving the approval.
The honest framing
Three things should be weighed before you file this form.
- Acceleration is not extra money. It is your own remaining IIBs, delivered faster. Workers under financial pressure sometimes read the larger check as an increase. It is not.
- Your checks end sooner. The weeks you compress do not return. Plan for the date the accelerated payments stop, because nothing arrives after it unless you qualify for another benefit.
- If your impairment rating is 15 percent or higher, acceleration creates a gap. Supplemental income benefits, called SIBs, are quarterly benefits available to workers with ratings of 15 percent or more, and their start date is fixed by the original IIBs schedule. Acceleration does not move that date. Your IIBs will end early, SIBs will begin when they were always going to begin, and the weeks in between pay nothing. Supplemental Income Benefits (SIBs) in Texas Workers' Compensation Claims explains what SIBs require.
If the problem is a single urgent expense rather than a weekly shortfall, compare this form with DWC047, the request for an advance on benefits. An advance delivers one sum now and is repaid out of later checks, which suits a one-time need. Acceleration changes the whole payment schedule. They solve different problems, and choosing the wrong one is expensive.
Forms like this one are usually filed under financial stress, which is exactly when the long-term cost is hardest to see. We have watched workers accelerate their IIBs to survive a bad month and then face a worse one when the checks stopped early, with the SIBs start date still weeks away. Before you sign a DWC046, let one of our attorneys run the numbers with you: the 85 percent cap, the new end date, and the gap if a 15 percent or higher rating puts SIBs in your future. The consultation costs nothing, and thirty minutes of arithmetic now can spare you a month with no income later.
2 pages · Rev. 08/22
