How to Fill Out and Submit DA Form 5960 in IPPS-A: BAH Recertification

DA Form 5960, the Authorization to Start, Stop, or Change Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) and Family Separation Allowance, is completed digitally in the Integrated Personnel and Pay System — Army (IPPS-A) through the Pay-Absence-Incentive Pay-Deduction (PAID) tile on your Self-Service homepage.¹ A blank PDF version dated January 2022 is still posted by the Army Publishing Directorate for situations that require a paper copy.² Get it right the first time. Errors turn into pay debts that the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) collects out of future paychecks.

When You Have to File

Any event that changes your housing situation or your dependents triggers a new DA Form 5960. The usual reasons:

Permanent Change of Station. BAH is tied to your duty station ZIP code, so every PCS needs a new authorization at the gaining installation’s rate.
Marriage or divorce. Marriage moves you to the with-dependents rate; a finalized divorce reverses that unless you have other qualifying dependents.
Birth or adoption of a child.
Moving into or out of government quarters. Moving on-post stops your full BAH; moving off-post starts it again.
Family Separation Allowance. When you are away from your dependents for more than 30 consecutive days on deployment or TDY, the same form starts FSA, currently $300 per month.³

AR 637-1, which replaced the older AR 37-104-4, requires prompt notification of any dependency or housing status change.⁴ File on the day of the event when you can. Effective dates on your form must match the dates on your supporting documents, not the day you got around to logging in.

One boundary: if you are stationed overseas and drawing Overseas Housing Allowance (OHA), the CONUS digital workflow does not apply. OHA still runs through the legacy paper process, and you submit DD Form 2367 alongside DA Form 5960.⁵

Documents to Have Ready Before You Start

The form alone will not process. Missing paperwork is the single most common reason a BAH action stalls. Pull these before you open IPPS-A:

Marriage certificate, for with-dependents BAH based on a spouse.
Divorce decree, when reverting to without-dependents or establishing child custody.
Birth certificate or adoption order for each dependent child.
Court-ordered child support agreement, if you are claiming BAH-Differential while living in government quarters. Your monthly child support must equal or exceed the BAH-Diff rate for your grade.⁶
Lease or mortgage statement, to establish the geographic location of your household.⁷
DD Form 2367, for OHA claims.

Secondary dependency claims — a parent you support, or someone raised in an in loco parentis relationship — require substantially more: DFAS Form 9124 affidavits from you and the dependent, DFAS Form 9125 affidavits from two unrelated third parties, allotment records or canceled checks proving you provide more than 50 percent of the person’s support (cash and purchase receipts do not count), and the dependent’s income verification.⁸⁹

How to Complete DA Form 5960 in IPPS-A

From your IPPS-A Self-Service homepage:

Open the Pay-Absence-Incentive Pay-Deduction (PAID) tile.
In the Selection Criteria section, choose “Housing” from the Entry Type dropdown, leave Status blank, and select “Add.”
On the Housing screen, click the magnifying glass next to Housing Category and pick “BAH.”
Set a Begin Date and End Date using the calendar icons. The End Date must be exactly one year after the Begin Date.
Select your Quarter Type, such as “Off-Post Private” or “Government — Inadequate.” If you pick Government — Inadequate, fill in the Inadequacy Percentage. Then choose your Housing Type.
When the BAH With Dependent Agreement prompt appears, select “OK” to confirm.
Use the lookup icons to select your Primary Residence, duty location, the ZIP code your BAH is based on, and your spouse if applicable. You can add up to ten additional dependents.
Select “Submit.” Your request routes to the S1 pool.

If this is your first BAH action in IPPS-A, the entry displays as a “Start” entry. The recertification label appears on the next cycle.¹

Where the Form Goes After You Submit

From the S1 pool the form moves to your company commander, or to the first commissioned officer in your chain with delegated certification authority, for review and signature.⁵ The commander’s signature certifies that what you claimed matches what the unit knows about you.

After the commander approves, S1 transmits the certification and supporting documents to the Army Military Pay Office (AMPO).¹ Actual compensation changes, as opposed to a simple recertification of existing entitlements, still route through the local finance office before reaching DFAS.¹⁰ Approved documentation is stored automatically in the Interactive Personnel Electronic Records Management System (iPERMS).

Straightforward changes should appear on your Leave and Earnings Statement within one to two pay cycles. Secondary dependents, overseas moves, and corrections to prior overpayments take longer. Check the housing and allowance section of your LES. If nothing has moved after 60 days, follow up with S1 and local finance before the gap turns into a back-pay problem.

Annual Recertification

Because IPPS-A forces the End Date to sit exactly one year past the Begin Date, an annual recertification cycle is built into every submission.⁵ IPPS-A sends email reminders as the deadline approaches.¹⁰

The recertification walk-through is nearly identical to the initial certification: same PAID tile screens, confirm current housing details, dependents, and addresses, submit for commander certification, and the record files to iPERMS. One important limit. Recertification is only for confirming that your current entitlements still apply. A real change — new dependent, new duty station, divorce, move into or out of quarters — requires a new initial action through local finance, not a recertification.¹⁰ Trying to use the recertification feature to change your rate will not work, and it will delay the correction.

Errors, Debt, and False Statements

Honest mistakes get resolved through pay adjustments. If a reporting delay or administrative error left you overpaid, DFAS collects the overpayment through involuntary salary offsets capped at 15 percent of your disposable pay per month.¹¹ You can agree in writing to a larger deduction, but the government cannot take more than that without your consent. The barracks rumor that DFAS will empty your check is not true. One Board for Correction of Military Records case involved a Soldier hit with a $12,010 letter of indebtedness after a PCS processing error delayed his DA Form 5960 update.¹² Even 15 percent adds up quickly.

Falsifying the form is a different problem. The certification block you sign warns that making a false statement or claim against the U.S. government is punishable by court-martial, with a maximum penalty of a $10,000 fine, five years of imprisonment, or both.¹³ Under UCMJ Article 107, punishment for a false official statement is whatever a court-martial directs, which can include reduction in rank, total forfeiture of pay, and confinement.¹⁴ The usual fraud pattern is claiming a dependent who does not exist or failing to report a divorce so the with-dependents rate keeps flowing. Finance cross-checks against DEERS, and the discrepancy surfaces. When it does, the investigation turns on whether the error was negligent or intentional.

1
IPPS-A. BAH Initial Certification Instructions
2
Army Publishing Directorate. DA Form 5960
3
Military Compensation. Family Separation Allowance
4
Headquarters Department of the Army. Army Regulation 637-1 – Army Compensation and Entitlements Policy
5
IPPS-A. BAH Recertification Job Aid
6
Defense Travel Management Office. Basic Allowance for Housing
7
United States Army. KSD Entitlement Matrix
8
Defense Finance and Accounting Service. Secondary Dependency – General Information
9
Defense Finance and Accounting Service. Army Secondary Dependency Claim – In Loco Parentis DD Form 137-3 Application Assistance
10
Integrated Personnel and Pay System – Army. IPPS-A Update – BAH Recertification, Switchover/Switchback Exercise, TM SUBCATs, Revocation/Promotion PARs, Absence Attachments, Clearance Data, PayPer Mismatch Report and Resources
11
Defense Finance and Accounting Service. Failure to Pay a Debt
12
Army Board for Correction of Military Records. AR20230007854
13
New York Division of Military and Naval Affairs. DA Form 5960
14
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 10 USC 907 – Art 107 False Official Statements