More than 4,000 soldiers just lost their BAH

About 4,200 soldiers will see a cut in their final paycheck in May 2018, after their Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) payment was revoked when they failed to update their records by March 1, 2018, Army officials announced.

BAH pays service members an entitlement of up to thousands of dollars monthly based on factors including zip code and paygrade.

But soldiers are required to have documentation proving eligibility, such as a marriage or birth certificate, as well as a DA Form 5960 uploaded to the Army's personnel system, known as iPERMS.

An official Army message released Jan. 2, 2018, gave soldiers until March 1, 2018, to update their documents or lose the payment, which could be up to several thousand dollars.

"Soldiers who did not submit their documents will see a rate reduction on their May end-of-month Leave and Earnings Statement," Army Human Resource Command officials said in a May 21, 2018 release.

Only currently deployed soldiers are exempt from the update mandate, officials said.

"They will need to comply with the policy 60 days after any post-deployment leave, or risk having their pay reduced," according to the release.

Whether troops qualify for BAH at all is based on paygrade and whether they have dependents.

Dual-military couples are both given a BAH payment at the "without dependents rate," unless they have children. In that case, one of the members receives the "with dependents rate," while the other does not.

The documentation crackdown was first reported late summer 2017, long before the Army officially released its mandate for updates in early 2018. At the time, about 60,000 soldiers were missing BAH documentation.

Soldiers can restore their benefit, and receive as back pay any allotments they lost thanks to missing records, by updating iPERMS through their human resources office or unit personnel actions officer, the release said.

This article originally appeared on Military.com. Follow @military.com on Twitter.