When can Social Security deduct a person’s WEP? I retired from my local school system, after working as a school custodian for 9 years, at the age of 69 in November 2015. When I retired I received a small School Employees Retirement System (SERS) pension. Social Security deducted the WEP penalty in February 2008 when I turned 62. I was not eligible to participate in the SERS program until November of 2011. They claim the WEP must be deducted before COLA or any other credits are calculated. This caused my earn cola (Dec. 2008 to Dec..2014) and earned credit for working past my retirement age of 66 (Feb 2012 to April 2015) to be reduced
Hi. The first month that your Social Security retirement or disability benefit rate can be reduced due to the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) is effective with the first month that you were entitled to both your Social Security benefit AND your non-Social Security covered pension. Being 'entitled' to a benefit means that you have applied for the benefit and have proven your right to benefits for a given period.
Therefore, I don't know of any reason why Social Security should have reduced your Social Security retirement benefit rate for any months prior to the first month you became entitled to your SERS pension. But, if your SERS plan is a defined benefit plan as opposed to being a traditional monthly pension plan, then the WEP definition of 'entitlement' could be earlier than when you actually started receiving the SERS payments. When a defined benefit plan is involved, 'entitlement' for WEP purposes can be as soon as the month that a person becomes eligible to receive disbursements from the plan, even if they don't actually elect to start receiving disbursements until sometime later.
If you think that Social Security misapplied WEP in your case, it sounds like it may be too late to pursue a formal appeal (https://www.ssa.gov/apply/appeal-decision-we-made). Unless good cause for late filing is involved, appeal requests must be filed within 60 days of the date that a person is notified of Social Security's determination. Even if you're not able to pursue a formal appeal, though, you could try submitting a written and signed request for a recalculation of your benefit rate to Social Security using a form SSA-795 (https://www.ssa.gov/forms/ssa-795.pdf). If that doesn't work, you might want to try contacting the offices of either your U.S. congressional representative or one of your U.S. senators to ask them to submit an inquiry to Social Security on your behalf.
Best, Jerry
