I am from Sweden and got to this country December 1979,i had never been in the us before. I worked In Sweden for 7 years before I got to US I worked for a small Swedish with no contact with us.. I started to work in us after I got married in September of 1980 and I worked of and on till I retired in 2019 at age of 67 I worked about 23 years in us. When I applied for my SOC I told that I got a small SOC. From Sweden for the 7 years I worked. Before coming to us and because of that they took of that amount on my us social security and called it windfall, how come?? I never double dipped
Would like to hear what you have to say
Thanks
Ingrid

Hi Ingrid. Congress passed the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) into our Social Security law in 1983. The WEP generally causes a person's U.S. Social Security retirement or disability benefits to be reduced if they receive a pension that's based on their earnings that were exempt from U.S. Social Security taxes. Congress's reasoning for creating WEP is explained in the following Social Security publication (https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10045.pdf).

The benefit computation involved in calculating the amount of reduction caused by WEP is too complex to explain here, but there is a WEP guarantee provision that limits the amount of reduction that can be caused by WEP to no more than one-half of the amount of the person's non-covered pension. So, your U.S. Social Security benefit should not have been lowered due to WEP by any more than half of the gross amount of your pension from Sweden.

Best, Jerry