Request for Waiver of Overpayment

An Army employee appealed the partial denial by the Claims Division of his application for waiver of a claim which resulted from an overpayment of foreign allowances. The employee was overpaid and underpaid various foreign post allowances for pay periods extending for a year and a half. The errors were due to changes in the foreign currency rates and administrative and computation errors. The employee maintained that due to the constantly fluctuating rates of pay, post allowances, and living allowances, his checks were rarely the same amount. Thus, he found it virtually impossible to compute his pay. The Claims Division had denied waiver for all but a small portion of the claim. It ackowledged that the employee might have had difficulty in determining with precision the amounts owed him, but he should have been put on notice of possible overpayment when his daily pay rate more than tripled and then dropped back down to approximately the same amount. At that time, he should have immediately contacted the appropriate officials. Since he did not, he was at least partially at fault. GAO has consistently held that an employee has the responsibility to verify the correctness of the payments he receives. Additionally, where a reasonable person would have made an inquiry but the employee did not, he is not free from fault, and the claim may not be waived. The huge increase in the employee's pay should have put him on notice of possible overpayment. The agency was correctly collecting the gross overpayment less the waived amount of underpayment. GAO affirmed the denial of waiver by the Claims Division for all but the small amount previously allowed. The waived overpayment occurred before the huge increases began and reasonably could have been considered as part of the adjustment in the employee's allowances.