DoD Identifies 23,000 Employees with Pension Errors

The Department of Defense recently began notifying more than 23,000 employees that they have been receiving either an overpayment or underpayment of their salary due to calculation errors in their pension contributions.

All of the affected employees are under the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS). More than 8,400 affected employees work for the Army, nearly 6,000 work for the Air Force, and more than 5,600 work for the Navy. Another 2,100 are at the Defense Logistics Agency, while 825 employees were affected at the Defense Finance and Accounting Service. The rest work for the Washington Headquarters Service or other DoD components.

Employees are being notified by their respective agencies if they are entitled to a reimbursement because of overpayments or if they owe money due to underpayments. The amount of money owed ranges from a couple hundred dollars to more than $10,000.

Employees who have been inadvertently underpaying into their pensions can submit a waiver requesting forgiveness for the amount owed or an extension of time in which to pay back the debt. Instructions for completing the waivers are included in the letters employees are receiving.

The calculation errors resulted from two changes in pension contribution rates for FERS employees that were made by Congress in 2012 and 2014. Due to no fault of employees, DoD agencies assigned some employees to the incorrect FERS retirement plan, resulting in erroneous contribution rates.

The Navy first discovered the coding errors last year, which triggered a departmentwide review by the Defense Civilian Personnel Advisory Service. DCPAS identified 23,175 employees across DoD with inaccurate calculations. Click here for the DCPAS PowerPoint presentation.

According to DCPAS, employees who have retired during the period in which the calculation errors were made are not affected because their pensions were adjusted at the time of retirement.

Citation: AFGE June 12, 2023