OCR Text |
Show Older veterans will benefit by new liberalizing pension law Social Security pension. (2) Amounts paid by a veteran vet-eran for the last illness and burial of his spouse or child. (3) Profit realized from sale of real estate or personal property prop-erty other than in the course of business. (4) Payments received for jury duty. (5) Payments under the War Orphans Education Association (6) State bonuses paid tc veterans. (7) Exclusion of all of a spouse's earned income, or $1 200 of her income, whichever is more advantageous. Older veterans in the lower income bracket will be able to receive at least $100 a month through the new law liberalizing liberaliz-ing veterans' pensions and providing pro-viding basic cost-of-living increases in-creases to most pensioners, including in-cluding widows and children, John S. Gleason, Jr., Administrator Adminis-trator of Veteran Affairs, said this week. The new law becomes effective effec-tive January 1, 1965, and the increased amounts will be contained con-tained in checks received on or about February 1, 1965.' VA emphasized that this new law applies only to those on VA pension rolls or those eligible eli-gible for pension, and does not apply to those drawing compensation com-pensation for service-connected disability or death. The law provides basic cost of living increases of 6.4 per cent to most pensioners, higher high-er increases for those with the greatest need, and the greatest great-est increases ,as well as medical medi-cal benefits, to the most severely se-verely disabled veterans. This last category includes those who are permanently housebound and who are blind or need constant aid and attendance. at-tendance. Administrator Gleason pointed point-ed out that tin; law also liberalizes lib-eralizes the definition of "income" "in-come" which veterans or their dependants may receive and still be eligible for pension. The VA will automatically adjust payments to those now eligible and will notify others, of their possible entitlement,! according to Elmer J. Smith, manager of the VA Regional, Office in Salt Lake City. Those persons who were on: i the pension prior to July l,i 1 1960, and receive pension pay- ments under what is called the "old system" are not eligible to benefit from the new pension pen-sion increases. To become eligible for the new increases they can notify the VA of their wish to elect pension benefits under the current cur-rent pension law which went into effect July 1, 1960, and Public Law 86-211. The VA said that many pensioners pen-sioners are expected to make this election. While the new law does not change the monetary income limitation which was set up in 1960, it allows recipients to exclude ex-clude certain monies when reporting re-porting annual income as required re-quired by law. These new exclusions are: i (1) Ten percent of the pay-. pay-. ments to an individual under ! any public or private annuity or retirement plan, includiing |