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The Windfall Elimination Provision and CSRS Offset Retirees

By John Grobe

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

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John Grobe is a retired federal employee with over 25 years of experience in federal human resources and President of Federal Career Experts, a training and consulting firm that specializes in federal employee retirement and career transition issues.

I was looking at some of the comments on my article "Windfall Elimination and Your Retirement Future" (WEP) and several readers asked for some information as to what the WEP does to CSRS Offset retirees.  Now, CSRS Offset folks are an exclusive bunch; and if you don't know what I mean by CSRS Offset – you are not one of them.

CSRS offset employees are employees who were vested in CSRS as of 12/31/1986, had a break in service of over one year and chose CSRS Offset over FERS upon their return to federal service.  The fact that they are vested in CSRS is what makes them subject to the WEP.

The good news is that many CSRS Offset employees have enough years of substantial earnings under Social Security to either eliminate or mitigate the WEP.  A link to the Social Security factsheet on the WEP was included in the September 26th article and the sheet contains a list of what constitutes substantial earnings.

It takes 30 years of substantial earnings to eliminate the WEP.  More than 20 years of substantial earnings can mitigate it.  To determine how many of these years you have, take your most recent Social Security Statement and compare the annual earnings out of which Social Security taxes were withheld with the substantial earnings thresholds.  If you've got 30 – you're home free.

© 2009 John Grobe. All rights reserved. This article may not be reproduced without express written consent from John Grobe.

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Readers' Comments

  • Are you guys catching the arrogance dripping from these folks who pooh-pooh the Windfall Law's effect on CSRS retirees? Notice how they don't really address the issue explained by those who get slammed by the law? They seem to restrict their argument to "you guys whine too much, so you shouldn't g...
    Posted: December 31, 2008 6:13 AM
  • My husband is retiring on a disability retirement from another agency. The agency is using the WEP to deduct money from his federal retirement. He has 30+ years of substantial earnings under SS. The HR rep at the agency says the 30+ years elimination of the WEP only applies to SS not to his feder...
    Posted: September 23, 2008 9:05 AM
  • By this argument, only the people who contributed into SS should be able to draw SS, and then only to the extent that they themselves contributed. So, for a woman whose husband worked and contributed to SS while she stayed at home raising the kids, when her husband dies, she should not be able to d...
    Posted: August 12, 2008 10:04 AM

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