The bill to end the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset has passed its final Congressional step and will become law once President Biden signs it.
I have a few questions about this:
- What’s the effective date?
- Can Social Security implement this without manual recalculations?
- Were there any other provisions in the bill apart from WEP/GPO?
10 comments:
“These changes are effective for benefits payable after December 2023.” And of course no money to implement the change. So another mandate that will occupy and redirect the limited time and resources of Systems and PCs to implement. Plus start the phone calls and walk-ins demanding to know when they will get their money. And the influx of applications of people who never filed because they would have faced total offset.
Appears the effective date is 12/2023. https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/82/text
Also there is going to be a made dash for the 100,000's of thousands of people who did not apply for spouses benefits knowing they would fully be offset. Some of these people will be subject to deemed filing and get retro back to 12/2023; other born prior to 01/02/1954 can only get 6 months retro and the protective filing date is going to control that.
Prepare your 1724's now, some dead people are getting Un-WEP'd
Also get ready if you are a CDB on a WEP'd record.
How about additional funding to implement this legislation? Thousands of individuals will be storming local SSA offices across our nation demanding their money. In addition, what happens if the individuals who passed away in their eligibility year? Finally, this legislation is helpful for a small percentage of individuals at the expense of many. The trust fund just got six months closer to insolvency.
This bill should have never been passed without raising the cap, cutting benefits or raising the retirement age to offset the costs. Now the legislators can enjoy their holidays while the trust fund is closer to insolvency. Wheels up!
There a number of individuals who live overseas and had their benefits reduced due to their foreign pension.
Typically to change pension information on a record a manual CIP input must be done on each record . Some can go through overnight while others except and a PC technician must review.
How about if the individual passed away, moved or changed bank accounts? A simple input will not suffice since some contact has to be made.
What a mess for the agency to figure out. There will be more traffic just inquiring about this change. Also a nice windfall to those that get a nice pension from a job that didn't contribute to social security, but also worked an additional job converted under social security. Having that second job standalone will provide higher social security benefit, but will drain the trust fund quicker.
I suspect they'll do a systems run to eliminate the offsets. However, the bigger problems are going to revolve around the people who didn't file (deemed filing rules were really ignored for a lot of these people which is going to result in open application issues, and many widows subject to total offset were discouraged from filing). And, there are even some people not eligible for RIB but who were eligible as a spouse or widow in total offset where they were officially told not to file by SSA because their Part B premiums could not be withheld from their annuities if they did. Have no clue how SSA will handle those cases -- probably could qualify for misinformation reopenings for them. This is going to be a nightmare.
And, many people who haven't filed and need to schedule an appointment are going to loose a month's worth of benefits if they don't do it by the end of this month.
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