Quote:
Originally Posted by talonip
My wife worked as a teacher in Missouri and retired and gets a pension from the state of Missouri. She also worked outside of the teacher Missouri pension system and paid into social security with 40 credits.
That sir is two different govt agency’s. Missouri and federal. The WEP system also restricted her from getting survivor benefits from social security if I were to pass away.
Point is she paid into SS to the max.
I was an airline pilot with a pension. and a 20 year military retiree. Should my military be reduced or eliminated?
Think about it!
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Let's think about it this way. Let's say the deductions from your wife's pay as a teacher went to SS instead of to the state agency. She would then be eligible to collect SS retirement benefits on her time as a teacher.
Then she left that job and continued as you wrote, working and contributing to SS again. If fact, she worked enough under this job to qualify again for SS.
Should she be able to collect two SS checks? (If so, I am due for three)
Clearly the answer is no. Her SS benefit would be calculated on the totality of her time paying into SS. She would receive one benefit from SS even though she contributed twice.
So how is the current situation any different? Instead of putting any money at all into SS it was put into a parallel program. Now when her SS benefit is calculated the system looks at the totality of her time paying SS but also takes into consideration the benefit she is receiving from the program that was used IN PLACE OF SS.
She was allowed to avoid paying into SS during that teacher's job because she would be collecting benefits from that program rather than SS. Now that she changed her mind and decided to pay into SS also, the system says fine, collect the benefits IN PLACE OF SS and we'll also allow you to collect SS but only after recalculating for those "IN PLACE OF" benefits.
NOTE: These reductions only apply to pensions received from programs where NO SS WAS PAID.
NOTE 2: These reductions do not apply to most (any?) private pension systems because those systems did not exempt employees from paying SS taxes. (this is consistent with the govt's CSRS and FERS systems. CSRS did not pay into SS and the reductions apply. FERS DOES pay into SS and no reductions apply)
NOTE 3: The WEP system applies to her SS benefits only. Survivor benefits are (were) restricted by GPO. Similar idea though I haven't looked into whether there is an exact parallel with collecting both SS and SS survivor.