My wife is a German citizen who worked as a Doctor in Germany in the 1980's and has contributed and still contributes monthly to the German Doctors' Pension, Badem-Wuerttemburgische Versorgungsanstalt fuer Aertzte. We both reside in the US and she is now a US citizen, eligible for Social Security at age 62 in 3 years, having worked 24 years in the US. Only a handful of hear earnings years in the US would be considered substantial earnings years by Social Security.

I understand her pension to be a private one with voluntary contributions, not a German government pension like our Social Security. Is this correct?

Will her German pension be taxable in the US? Will she have to determine her cost, and possibly use the General Rule computation from IRS Publication 939?

When collecting her Social Security pension from the US, will she be subject to the Windfall Elimination Provision?

Is her German pension covered by the Totalization agreement between Germany and the US?

The Doctor's Pension has provided documents in German showing her contributions history and expected benefits, but not her earnings history. I don't think they even know her earnings history, since the contributions were voluntary. Social Security has asked for a letter from them showing both. Are we even able to comply with this request, and can our compliance be a letter in German that we bring to our local SSA office?

We are hard-pressed to find documents that cover all these particulars. Any help you can offer would be most welcome.

Thank You

Hi,

I can't be sure, but it sounds to me like your wife's German pension would likely be considered as a pension for purposes of the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP). It may not be, though, if the pension is strictly based on voluntary contributions, such as an IRA. Here is how Social Security's operations manual defines a pension for purposes of WEP:

A pension is a periodic or lump sum payment from an employer's retirement or disability plan, based on employer and/or employee contributions and based on eligibility factors such as age, length of service or earnings. Payments from either defined benefit (DB) or defined contribution (DC) plans may be considered pensions for WEP purposes. For a pension to cause WEP, the payment must be based on earnings for service that were not covered by Social Security.

I'm not familiar with the details of any German pension plans, so I can't give you a definite answer. Nor do I know if your wife's German pension will be taxable in the U.S. because my expertise is limited to U.S. Social Security benefits, not tax regulations.

The totalization agreement between the U.S. and Germany covers the Social Security programs of the 2 countries. Your wife's doctor's pension wouldn't be covered under the agreement unless it's in some manner under the scope of the German Social Security system. Furthermore, if your wife has enough work credits to qualify for U.S. Social Security retirement benefits under the normal rules (i.e. 40 quarters of coverage), the totalization agreement won't have any impact on how her U.S. Social Security retirement benefits are calculated.

Social Security has translators for all languages, so if you submit a document to them as evidence and the document is written in German it should not be a problem.

Best, Jerry