Feb 26, 2025

SSA Believes They Can Get Out “Most” WEP/GPO Payments By End Of March

      From a press release:

Today, the Social Security Administration announced it is immediately beginning to pay retroactive benefits and will increase monthly benefit payments to people whose benefits have been affected by the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO). These provisions reduced or eliminated the Social Security benefits for over 3.2 million people who receive a pension based on work that was not covered by Social Security (a "non-covered pension") because they did not pay Social Security taxes. The Social Security Fairness Act ends WEP and GPO.  …

“The agency’s original estimate of taking a year or more now will only apply to complex cases that cannot be processed by automation. The American people deserve to get their due benefits as quickly as possible.”  …

Many beneficiaries will be due a retroactive payment because the WEP and GPO offset no longer apply as of January 2024. Most people will receive their one-time retroactive payment by the end of March, which will be deposited into their bank account on record with Social Security.

Many of these people will also receive higher monthly benefits, which will first be reflected in the benefit payment they receive in April. Depending on factors such as the type of Social Security benefit received and the amount of the person's pension, the change in payment amount will vary from person to person. 

Anyone whose monthly benefit is adjusted, or who will get a retroactive payment, will receive a mailed notice from Social Security explaining the benefit change or retroactive payment. Most people will receive their retroactive payment two to three weeks before they receive their notice in the mail, because the President understands how important it is to pay people what they are due right away. Social Security is expediting payments using automation and will continue to handle many complex cases that must be done manually, on an individual case-by-case basis. Those complex cases will take additional time to update the beneficiary record and pay the correct benefits. 

Social Security urges beneficiaries to wait until April to ask about the status of their retroactive payment, since these payments will process incrementally into March. Since the new monthly payment amount will begin with the April payment, beneficiaries should wait until after receiving their April payment, before contacting Social Security with questions about their monthly benefit amount. …

     Most could mean 51%. Just how many will require manual calculation? Where will the staff come from to do those manual calculations?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Would think most single entitlement cases are the easy ones (increase from something to more, or from nothing to something), anything involving SSI would have windfall offset (auxiliary and survivor most likely), and dual entitlement cases likely where some manual processing comes in?

Anonymous said...

We will see if this is another example of this administration over promising the public like bringing down inflation on day one.