{"id":43132,"date":"2023-11-03T20:21:05","date_gmt":"2023-11-03T20:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2023\/11\/03\/va-pauses-pension-debt-collections-after-discovery-of-system-error\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T05:09:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T05:09:15","slug":"va-pauses-pension-debt-collections-after-discovery-of-system-error","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/veterans\/2023\/11\/03\/va-pauses-pension-debt-collections-after-discovery-of-system-error\/","title":{"rendered":"VA pauses pension debt collections after discovery of system error"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nearly 40,000 low-income veterans and their survivors receiving federal pensions<\/a> may owe money because of accounting errors made over the last 12 years, but Veterans Affairs officials<\/a> said they don\u2019t plan on collecting that debt for now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The episode is the latest computer systems headache<\/a> for the department, which has seen a series of benefits mistakes due to glitches in recent months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Department officials<\/a> on Friday said they recently discovered that tens of thousands of pension recipients \u201cmay have debts that have not yet been established\u201d because of overpayments due to past mistakes in their self-reported income levels. The pension payment issue dates back to 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VA officials said \u201cdue to discrepancies in data matching,\u201d department staffers were for years unable to verify the actual income of pension recipients. When new tools were made available in July 2022, they found that 9,900 beneficiaries were being overpaid, some for more than a decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\t