I am a retired Federal employee with CSRS retirement income. At age 65 I qualified for Social Security payments with 40+ quarters of non-government employment income. My SS statements gave me a close calculation of what my SS monthly payments would be. After I filled for SS at age 65, in 2008, I was surprised that my SS monthly payment was cut to almost half of the calculated amount. The SS Office told me that the SS payment was cut in half because of a law that Congress passed a long time ago that didn't allow government employees to receive their full SS payment. I was told that there was nothing I could do to get my full SS payments.
QUESTION:
Is there anything I can do to get the full SS payments that I qualified for with my 40+ quarters of non-government employment income?
Ty,
The only thing you can do reduce or eliminate the effect of the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) is to earn 20 or more years of substantial earnings under Social Security, see: https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10045.pdf. The WEP was implemented in 1983 to eliminate an unintended windfall for people who didn't pay Social Security taxes for their whole career, i.e. getting a higher replacement rate than those who did pay Social Security taxes over their entire career.
Basically, the WEP ensures that people in both case are treated the same.
Best,
Mike