VA cancels debts related to pension overpayment error

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is canceling pension debt incurred by thousands of low-income veterans after a data-matching error spanning a decade.

It’s a major update to a story 10 Tampa Bay first reported back in November, when a local veteran received a letter from the VA saying he was overpaid more than $100,000 of pension dating back several years and would have to pay it back.

The VA later paused collection on the debt, until they determined a path forward; that path is now cancelling the debt of more than 12,000 impacted veterans and survivors.

“VA has canceled the debts related to this data integrity issue for these 12,228 affected beneficiaries and no further action is required from them if their current debt balance is $0.00 (meaning there is no other debt pending from a separate issue),” the VA Public Affairs Office said in a statement Friday.

Nearly 23,000 other veterans were told they were line to have debts established as well, but as the VA processes their claims they say "based on current guidance issued, no debt will be collected if it resulted from the data integrity issue."

The VA provides pension payments to low-income wartime veterans based on income level, which is self-reported or verified by data matching done by the department.

Between 2011 and 2022, the VA says there was a data integrity issue in data matching between them and the Social Security Administration, so they were unable to reliably verify the income of veterans.