are many of you receiving insane debt letters from the special pay transition? Sounds like this is happening all over the Army in the last few weeks. We just received one for 44k...with no explanation. We verified with two special pay folks our adjustments were accurate when the transition happened. I am certain that number is not even close to correct.
Special pay debacle
- Thread starter aau22
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Goodness. This is scary. Hopefully it gets straightened out? Haven’t heard happening in Navy MC. It was hinted at last year, as a possibility.
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Just received my debt letter for 25K. I know its wrong. I know I was paid 15K too much and I held onto that. It only took them 7 months to send the debt letter. The best I can figure is someone who doesn't know WTF they are doing looked at one of my specialty pays and then guessed that I owed the before tax amount. I'm gonna see if I can resolve it quickly locally, if not I'm strongly considering going straight to an IG complaint. I am positive I will lose hours working this BS to its conclusion.
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Can’t we get JAG to resolve? I know JAGs can help enlisted with Toll pay issues (get a trumped up 200 dollar fine down to 70 cents). Thus, something like this should be right up their alley. Let them do the stressful heavy lifting for you.
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I'm going to guess that they will want the entire PRETAX amount back, and will let you settle the rest with the IRS when you file in April.
From DFAS's perspective, they paid you a sum of money and the IRS held on to some portion. DFAS won't get refunded by the IRS. DFAS expects to be refunded by you.
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They always recoup pretax.
D
deleted480308
They over payed a medical student friend of mine and absolutely wanted all of it pretax
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Of course Gastrapathy, you are correct. This is the pretax amount of what I owe. The local financial office told me I would pay back the after tax amount when my specialty pay finally kicked in. What is hard to swallow is they paid me an extra ISP, I got taxed on it, and now I have to pay back the full tax amount. I think getting all of this back at tax time is questionable, but we will see. I am paying 5K more right now because of their error, and the local finance offices didn't know enough to warn us to expect the pre-tax amount as the debt amount. This is a lot of money in the short term. Your consultant is likely collecting stories to submit as part of a medical corps-wide inquiry. If you have a similar story, send it to your consultant.
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Wow. Just wow.
What a pathetic, inept system. It amazes me that our federal government would treat our active duty physicians this way.
As has been said many times on the forum, the only power you have while on active duty is to speak with your feet. Walk away as soon as you can from this debacle. Educate prospective med students about the disaster that is military medicine and bring it down from the inside by decimating its’ recruiting and retention.
I would love to see the medical corps on its’ knees begging for docs. They deserve it.
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Malingerers can “write their congressman,” have their CO call and yell at your OIC when you don’t give them what they want, and put in negative ICE comments when you don’t fill their narcotics. All of which sends the admin types, clipboards in hand, in a flurry.
Why then, are voices of military physicians not getting any admin types running around “getting the CO an answer ASAP?”
Why then, are voices of military physicians not getting any admin types running around “getting the CO an answer ASAP?”
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Ugh...
Relatively new to this forum. Just had my bicycle stolen on base in a country, I could have left my wallet with $1000 dollars and i would find it where I left it, so I think Im here more to vent.
I sympathise with the initial thread author.
Can attest that I finally got my board cert pay and special pay (save pay) back from in one lump sum and my taxed amount was higher than the back pay I received. Nobody at PSD is able to figure out why. My pay check has not stabilized since my PCS, and every paycheck has been a surprise amount, cannot figure out if I am getting paid correctly.
If im getting overpaid, im pretty sure someone willl figure that out, however, if Im underpaid, thats up to me to figure out or its my loss.
I do not know if it's someone who is purposely sabotaging, or its the quality of people or its the system...
Im just venting, because of all the small annoyances and waste of time....
Relatively new to this forum. Just had my bicycle stolen on base in a country, I could have left my wallet with $1000 dollars and i would find it where I left it, so I think Im here more to vent.
I sympathise with the initial thread author.
Can attest that I finally got my board cert pay and special pay (save pay) back from in one lump sum and my taxed amount was higher than the back pay I received. Nobody at PSD is able to figure out why. My pay check has not stabilized since my PCS, and every paycheck has been a surprise amount, cannot figure out if I am getting paid correctly.
If im getting overpaid, im pretty sure someone willl figure that out, however, if Im underpaid, thats up to me to figure out or its my loss.
I do not know if it's someone who is purposely sabotaging, or its the quality of people or its the system...
Im just venting, because of all the small annoyances and waste of time....
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I have never had an honest to goodness malingerer start a congressional or have their COC try and force anything. As was stated in the other thread relating to this topic, if they are a true malingerer, their COC will likely be having discipline issues with them and will not be going to bat for them. As long as I am doing my job to the best of my abilities I can take the heat (including ICE comments) and sleep at night.
I had similar pay issues when it was time to renew my contract. I got a double ASP or something similar and knew not to spend the money. My next paycheck was was like $100. Luckily I didn't spend the money and had enough to cover my household expenses until the dust settled. It has been consistent since. It did punch me to a higher tax bracket that year as well and I did lose out in taxes.
My recommendation is keep feeding the issues up to BUMED/DFA through your COC. If they don't know the issues are affecting people more than onesies twosies then it might not get on their radar.
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I am fortunate in that I was still in residency when the new bonus system took effect, which means that I didn’t have the snafu of getting the old bonus and then having to pay it back the year the new bonus took effect. However, when I switched from the resident IP to the full attending IP the pay office mistakenly set my start date from the full attending IP to the date I graduated residency, rather than October (full attending pay should start 3 months after you graduate from residency according to official policy). This resulted in me being overpaid by quite a bit. I pointed this out to the pay office and they have started taking the debt back. It looks like they correctly calculated how much they overpaid me, but for the life of me I cannot figure out how they are determining how much they take back each month. One month it looks like they took back around $5k. This month it looks like they are taking back $2k. Why? Who knows, lol.
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Sure. They’ll fix it if you just keep complaining.
This stuff happens to sailors all the time. I helped one through a recoupment issue that ultimately requires us to refile 3 years worth of taxes. There are hundreds of these going on all the time. The congressional had no effect. I ended up talking to someone senior at DFAS (which they try to make nearly impossible) and it was obviously just business as usual. Top 50 baby.
This stuff happens to sailors all the time. I helped one through a recoupment issue that ultimately requires us to refile 3 years worth of taxes. There are hundreds of these going on all the time. The congressional had no effect. I ended up talking to someone senior at DFAS (which they try to make nearly impossible) and it was obviously just business as usual. Top 50 baby.
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DFAS is so inept it's not even funny. I've had numerous issues with pay over the years (not in the military) and you end up in a continuous cycle of "you need to talk to your local payroll department" and then your local payroll folks say, "you need to talk to DFAS" or "we sent a ticket to DFAS for this. We will let you know".
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It's almost never sabotage. The quality of people is just too low for that...
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They're not actually sure how to add. So they take back a varying amount until you finally tell them they've taken too much, then they stop. Have you ever gotten change back from someone working at McDonald's? Most of the time it's fine, but every now and then you catch that guy who clearly can't do basic math who watches your expression while he's giving you change, because he isn't sure how much to give....I mean, that happens less and less now that cash registers do the work for them, but this is the Army. They can't afford that kind of technology.
