washingtonscene
Referencing the “enormous growth in our medical costs,” Lynn said, “It is time to lift the 15-year freeze on TRICARE enroll- ment fees for working-age retirees.”
Army Families I
address issues that manifest down the road. (MRP2 is a Warrior Transition Unit pro- gram that allows servicemembers to return to active duty for evaluation, treatment, and disability evaluation processing within six months of their release from active duty.) All of these issues are among MOAA’s
Cite Needs Conference identifies concerns.
n early February, MOAA representa- tives attended the 2011 Army Family Action Plan (AFAP) conference. AFAP brings together about 150 Army family representatives from around the globe. Participants include active duty, retired, reserve, and injured servicemembers as well as DoD civilian employees. Attendees worked in groups to identify
the key issues affecting Army families and rank them in priority order. The top five issues cited were: ID cards for surviving children with an
active duty sponsor: ID cards of survivor children should note both dependent sur- vivor status and active duty status to avoid having to provide multiple forms of identi- fication for entitled services. Formal standardized training for desig-
nated caregivers of wounded warriors: Care- givers of active duty servicemembers need training and education programs similar to those used by the VA and being developed as part of the recent caregiver legislation. Concurrent receipt for all medically re-
tired servicemembers: All medically retired servicemembers should be exempt from the disability offset to military retired pay. Military child development program fee:
Fees should be capped at no higher than 25 percent of a military family’s total income. Medical Retention Processing 2 (MRP2)
time restrictions for reserve component servicemembers: Extend the MRP2 time restriction from six months to five years to
36 MILITARY OFFICER APRIL 2011 legislative goals.
Did Your Withholding
Go Up? Here’s why.
M
any MOAA members have asked why the federal income tax withholding on their military
retired pay increased this year. It’s because the two-year Making Work Pay (MWP) tax-relief program enacted in 2009 expired at the end of 2010. The MWP cut tax with- holding rates from checks in 2009 and 2010. The program wasn’t extended to 2011, so the tax tables reverted to the higher levels. The MWP program was designed to act as a special stimulus payment to help kick- start the country out of recession by putting some extra money in citizens’ hands right away. Technically, the MWP provision was intended only to apply to qualifying taxpay- ers still earning wages. However, because the Defense Finance and Accounting Ser- vice (DFAS) uses the same tax tables and pay systems for retired pay as it does for ac- tive duty pay, the system didn’t discriminate between retired pay and wages. This doesn’t mean you owe more or
are paying higher taxes — it’s just DFAS has returned to withholding the pre- stimulus amount from each deposit. If this results in too much money being withheld, you will receive any overpaid amount via a tax refund.
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