If you have a non-covered pension (from work where you didn’t pay SS taxes) and a Social Security benefit from other work where you did pay SS taxes, you need to understand the Windfall Elimination Provision.
The WEP is simply an alternate formula for calculating Social Security benefits for those who have a pension from a job where no Social Security taxes were paid.
This calculator will tell you:
- The amount of Social Security benefit you can expect after the WEP reduction (for comparison we also illustrate your benefit without considering the WEP).
- The number of “substantial earnings” years you already have
- How additional years of substantial earnings will affect the WEP penalty
To use this calculator you’ll need to get a copy of your earnings history from the SSA. You should only put in your years of earnings that were covered by Social Security.
The new calculator is good, but… your SS statement groups “way back” earnings into decades – not breaking down to yearly until 2005. Unless you have a statement from a few years ago that gives yearly amounts this calculator won’t work as it won’t know the number of year of substantial earnings. (Typical government work: and there’s nobody to contact.)
I have a TRS pension based on 20 years of being a TX teacher. Of the 20 years, only 40 months were not covered by SS. The rest of the time I was employed by a district where I paid into both SS and TRS. Is that taken into account at all when determining WEP, or only the fact I have 23 years of substantial earnings?
I wish The calculator would work with previous years. I retired in 2014 and would like to double check SOCIAL SECURITY’s figures for my Social Security check.
Can this calculator sheet be saved so that annual earning don’t need to be re-entered every time?
Does this calculator also work for GPO affecting spousal benefits?
Glad to hear they were valuable!
Love the calculators, especially the WEP calculator. My wife will be hit by it but I won’t since I have enough qualifying income years to be excluded. My prior calculations were close, but not what the calculator shows.