Policy

Most VEA compensation and rehabilitation determinations made on or after 21 April 2025 must be appealed directly to the Veterans’ Review Board (VRB), via VRB lodgement channels, rather than to DVA. Appeal timeframes remain the same for all claim types except Acute Support Package, which has been extended to 12 months. DVA has 28 days to prepare the report for the VRB under section 352D of the MRCA. The Commission continues to have the discretion to initiate a reconsideration of own motion.

Last amended: 13 June 2012

Terminology

The table below shows a number of the commonly used terms under previous taxation system and the current names:

Last amended: 6 July 2006

Distance from financial institutions more than 30 kilometres

The [glossary:Commission:545]'s policy, to allow an exemption where payment by direct credit cannot be accessed, is regarded as satisfied where a pensioner lives in an area 30 kilometres or more from facilities offered by financial institutions.

Legislative definitions of taxable payments

The VEA does not define which payments made by DVA are taxable or non-taxable. This information is specified in the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997. The payments listed below are those specified as taxable in that legislation.

Taxable service pension

[glossary:Service pension:245] is taxable when paid on the following grounds:

Last amended: 6 July 2006

Circumstances in which an exemption will be granted

It is the [glossary:Commission:545]'s current policy to only grant an exemption from a direct credit payment (i.e. allow a cheque payment) where:

Last amended: 31 January 2008

Who can be appointed as a trustee?

The [glossary:Commission:545] may appoint trusteeship for a pensioner to any of the following:

What are income support standard letters?

Income support standard letters are manually generated spontaneous letters used by examiners for special communication with or in relation to individual income support recipients.

Income support standard letters system

The income support standard letters system contains all the nationally agreed income support standard letter templates. The standard letters system is not linked to the payment advices system and the letters cannot be produced by the Document Generation System.    

This section contains information about payments made by DVA that are not taxable.

Last amended: 16 August 2013

Managing potential conflict of interest

Conflict of interest can be defined as “a conflict between the public duties and private interest of a public official, in which the public official has private-capacity interests which could improperly influence the performance of their official duties and responsibilities”.

Commission authority to make direct credit payments

The [glossary:VEA:373] gives [glossary:Commission:545] the authority to: