Social Security and Government Employees: Part Two – Windfall Elimination Provision

In Part One of this series of articles, we looked at certain types of government employees. These are people who have worked previously with a “non-covered” pension. That is, they worked at a job where they didn’t have to pay Social Security (SS) withholding taxes (such as certain state and municipal employees), but still got a separate pension from the work they did.

The federal government has ways of adjusting any possible Social Security benefits to reflect this. Today we look at the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP), which is used to reduce a worker’s Social Security benefits to offset the perceived windfall.