Social Security and You: Public Employees Are NOT Being Cheated by Offsets

A month or so ago, I wrote a column about people who mistakenly think they are being cheated by the Social Security Administration out of benefits they believe they are due.

But one group I didn't mention in that column are the biggest complainers of all: public employees such as teachers and police officers in certain states, many of whom don't even pay into Social Security in the first place. (The rules about which public employees pay into Social Security can change from one state to another.) Some gripe that they are being cheated out of spousal benefits on a husband's or wife's Social Security account. Others complain that any Social Security benefits they earn from a side job are reduced unfairly.

Their complaints center around two laws. One is called the "government pension offset," or GPO. The other is called the "windfall elimination provision," or WEP. Before I explain what these rules are all about, I've got to give some background.

When Social Security laws were enacted in the 1930s, Congress felt that they could not force a federal pension plan (Social Security) on state and local governments. So they gave them the option of joining Social Security or not. Most did. But some did not. And still today, about 10% of all workers, mostly in state and local jobs in the public sector, are not covered by Social Security. (Those are the teachers and police officers -- along with other state and local employees -- I mentioned earlier.)

Also, federal government employees were initially not covered by Social Security because they had their own pension system in place before Social Security came along. All federal employees hired since 1983 pay into Social Security. However, there are still some old feds out there (hired before 1983) who are not in Social Security.

Folks who spend the bulk of their careers in jobs not covered by Social Security are potentially subject to a couple of offsets that impact either their own Social Security benefit (based on Social Security-covered work they did outside of their regular job) or any benefits they potentially might be due from their spouse's Social Security record. There always has been a great deal of confusion and an awful lot of misinformation about those offsets.

As I mentioned above, one offset is the WEP. This is the one that impacts your own Social Security benefit. The other is the GPO, and it reduces any spousal benefits you might be due.

The key to understanding WEP is to realize that the word "social" in Social Security means something. Unlike private and other public sector pension plans, there are social goals built into the Social Security program. One of those goals is to raise the standard of living of lower-income workers in retirement. This is accomplished through a benefit formula that is designed to give lower paid workers a better deal than their more highly paid counterparts. Very low-paid workers could get a Social Security benefit that represents up to 90% of their earnings. This percentage is known as a "replacement rate." People with average incomes (the middle class) generally get a 40% replacement rate. Higher income people get a rate around 30%.

The problem is that people who spend the bulk of their working lives not paying into Social Security are automatically treated as low-income people by the Social Security Administration's computers. That's because there are "zeros" on their Social Security earnings record for every year they spent in their non-Social Security job. SSA's records won't show they were actually working at the other job and earning another pension. Instead, their Social Security earnings record simply shows gaps in their work history. So when figuring their Social Security retirement benefit, SSA's computers automatically use the formula intended to compensate a lower-income person.

But teachers, police officers, firefighters and other government employees generally can be classified as people with average incomes, so they should get the same Social Security replacement rate paid to all middle-class workers. That's why a modified formula is used to refigure their benefits and give them the proper -- and fair -- replacement rate. If you're an employee affected by this law, that modified formula takes you from the 90% (poor person's) replacement rate to the 40% (middle-class person's) replacement rate, thus usually reducing estimated benefits by about half.

Most career teachers and government employees generally have just barely over the qualifying 40 quarters (10 years) of Social Security-covered work. But if you have 30 or more years of "substantial" Social Security earnings, the windfall provision won't apply, and your benefit will not be reduced. If you have between 20 and 29 years of substantial earnings, your Social Security benefit will be only partially reduced. A chart giving a year-by-year breakdown of what the government considers substantial earnings is in my book, "Social Security: Simple and Smart."

The other rule that so many people misunderstand is the GPO. In a nutshell, that law says that an amount equal to two-thirds of a non-Social Security-covered pension must be deducted from any Social Security dependent's benefits a person might be due. In effect, the law prevents most folks who work at jobs not covered by Social Security from collecting benefits as a wife, widow, husband or widower from a spouse's Social Security record.

What these people don't realize is that the government pension offset law simply treats them in the same way that all other working people have always been treated. For example, if a woman who worked at a job that was covered by Social Security gets a Social Security retirement pension, that pension has always offset any spousal benefits she might have been due. Before the GPO law went into effect, people getting a non-Social Security pension were the only working people in this country who could get their own retirement pension AND a full dependent's benefit from Social Security.

And the GPO law actually gives these people a bit of a break. Social Security retirement pensions offset spousal benefits dollar for dollar. But a non-Social Security retirement pension causes only a three-for-two offset. In other words, for each $3 you get in a teacher's or other noncovered pension, you lose only $2 from Social Security spousal benefits.

Due to the space constraints of my column, this has been a very simplified explanation of some very complicated laws. To learn more about the WEP and GPO, I have an entire chapter devoted to these provisions in my guidebook.

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If you have a Social Security question, Tom Margenau has two books with all the answers. One is called "Social Security -- Simple and Smart: 10 Easy-to-Understand Fact Sheets That Will Answer All Your Questions About Social Security." The other is "Social Security: 100 Myths and 100 Facts." You can find the books at Amazon.com or other book outlets. Or you can send him an email at thomas.margenau@comcast.net. To find out more about Tom Margenau and to read past columns and see features from other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.