Increase military retirees’ reactivation of their online military retirement finance management platform accounts to allow retirees faster access to their tax documents and to offset operational burden for the agency during tax season.
One of the purposes of the online platform myPay is to help military retirees manage their military retirement finances. It allows electronic download of tax documents, such as a Retirement Account Summary and the IRS-1099 form. While myPay accounts are automatically created for all military retirees, many have never used their account, or have let their accounts deactivate by not logging in for 180 consecutive days. At the time of this pilot, about 55% of the retiree population had inactive myPay accounts (1.4 out of 2.5 million retirees). This poses a problem during tax season, when the number of retirees contacting the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) surges as retirees try to either re-gain access to myPay or request copies of their tax documents. For example, in the fourth quarter of 2014 DFAS received a monthly average of 12,393 calls regarding accessing myPay accounts, compared to 29,046 during the first quarter (tax season) of 2015. The increased call volume during tax season places operational burden on DFAS and may result in slower services for military retirees.