The number that decides January is on your RAS

Published August 26, 2026. The benefits-news items below were current as of that date. This is an archived issue of our weekly email — subscribe here to get new issues first.

Another quiet week — and the document that matters more than the news

No rate change, no new DFAS rule, no CRSC policy shift this week. The next hard number on the calendar is the August CPI-W, which BLS publishes in mid-September — the second of the three readings that set the 2027 COLA, with the final figure announced in mid-October. Anything quoted as a “2027 COLA” before then is still a projection.

So use the quiet week on the document the January election math actually runs on: your Retiree Account Statement (RAS), the pay statement DFAS posts to your myPay account. Most retirees read one line on it — net pay — and stop. The CRDP/CRSC comparison lives in the lines above it: your gross retired pay, and the VA waiver line showing how much retired pay you are giving up for VA compensation.

Those two numbers, plus your years of service and how much of your rating is combat-related, are the whole comparison. And remember the tax asymmetry: CRDP is taxable, CRSC is not. Two options with a similar gross can be hundreds of dollars apart in take-home. For Chapter 61 retirees with fewer than 20 years, CRDP is barred entirely — so CRSC may be the only route to restored retired-pay dollars at all. (Source: DFAS, Retired Military & Annuitants, CRDP/CRSC program guidance.)

The comment window on the 5-page VA form just closed

Last issue we covered VA’s plan to cut Form 21-526EZ — the disability compensation application — from fifteen pages to five. The public comment period on that proposal closed August 24. VA now reviews the comments and finalizes the form, with the shorter version targeted for the end of this calendar year. (Source: Federal Register, VA information collection notice 2026-12555, published June 23, 2026.)

Nothing to do but watch — except prepare for what it changes. A shorter form means fewer places where the circumstances of an injury get written into the claim file, and the ratings that come out of that file are what every CRSC packet is later built on. The story of how you were hurt will have to live in what you attach: service treatment records from the time of injury, award citations, line-of-duty and incident documentation. Claimants who file the short form with thin attachments may find the gap only years later, when a CRSC board goes looking for the “how” and the file only ever recorded the “what.”

Claiming every rated condition instead of the ones you can prove

The kitchen-sink packet feels safe — you are rated for nine conditions, so you claim all nine and let the board sort it out. In practice it is one of the quieter ways strong cases get weak results.

CRSC is decided condition by condition, and each one has to clear the same bar: documentation tying it to armed conflict, hazardous service, an instrumentality of war, or conditions simulating war. Conditions claimed on hope, with nothing in the record to carry them, do not just fail on their own — they bury your provable conditions in paper and hand the board easy denials that set the tone for the file.

A packet that claims three conditions with records beats one that claims nine with adjectives. And conditions you cannot document yet are not lost — with the right paperwork they can follow later. What you cannot do is un-dilute a first impression.