I only worked some 5 years in the US when I had to retire. Hubby worked 12 years and so gets SS/Medicare. My SS was based on his contributions and until this year I received approx half of his, out of which was taken MY Medicare charges.
This year he started to take his UK state pension and declared as such and WEP was triggered. His SS reduced accordingly and so was mine. Not t being much to start off with after Medicare costs were taken, it was reduced to 0 !
Hoping that with this new ruling I might be eligible for something. However I can't really complain - being able to access Medicare, based on his earnings, is a godsend.

I saw this on the CBS news web site - The bill would also end a second provision that reduces Social Security benefits for those workers' surviving spouses and family members - so hopefully those of us receiving a spouse pension will get it recalculated as well. The pessimist in me half expects to find out as my pension wasn't reduced directly by WEP it will not change. Like you I'm just thankful for the Medicare cover, that saves a lot each month.

He's likely a victim of the deluge of misinformation about WEP that its opponents have been disseminating in order to gain support for the bill. He might well 'believe' he's getting less in his social security because of WEP, but if he had 30 years of substantial earning outside his cop job then he definitely isn't losing anything. Even if he didn't have that, the most WEP can affect his SS is $587 or half of his public pension, so he'd have to be getting at least $1174 a month from his 12 years police service. Anyone with a public service pension that affects WEP had to voluntarily opt out of paying social security. Frankly, it's more than fair for those people not to get full social security benefits, considering it's the people who couldn't opt out who will ultimately pay for the double dippers. I'm surprised no-one told Congress or the Senate about us foreign pension recipients; likely lying by omission so they could get this bill passed. Let's hope President Musktrump doesn't realize all those immigrants are getting the extra benefit, too. I can see it being imposed again in the future, just for us, and it may be worse than before.

Slight correction, at least one State - Massachusetts - did not offer the choice of State Pension or Social Security contributions - it was mandatory contributions to the State Pension, no option for Social Security. It was also worse for Part Time employees since they didn't even get the Pension payout when they retired, their mandatory 7.5% personal contributions went in to a basic savings account earning piddling interest, with no State match going in either. Thankfully since there is no Pension, just a repayment of contributions + interest, these Part-Timers would not have been WEPed. Personally we would have much preferred just to pay in to Social Security, at least that has a life-time payout.

I must say I still don't fully understand why my and hubby's US SS was reduced by WEP.
I thought that WEP affected those who received a US State pension which had not had US social security payments deducted from it. i.e state/fed workers, teachers etc;, and then they subsequently went on to receive another pension.
Hubby and I have UK state pensions based on our UK NI contributions and taxes. Those pensions are taxed in the US.
Hubby is now having his US Social Security reduced because he has now started taking his UK State pension and my US SS (based on his contributions) has also been reduced due to WEP; but during his employment in the US he paid into Social Security and Medicare.
Have I got this right....? Why are we being penalised?

If you look up your NI contributions record it should clearly show which years were from work and which ones were from voluntary contributions. Those years with voluntary contributions such as when working abroad but still electing to pay NI contributions don’t count in the WEP calculation and on applying for SS they are clearly defined on form SSA-308

If you don’t send in form SS-308, which has a section on voluntary contributions, then the whole of the OAP is used in the WEP calculation instead of just a portion.

WEP is/was applied to all pensions based upon earnings upon which social security was not deducted no matter where or when the pension was earned. That included all foreign pensions of any type, for example the UK state pension and private UK pensions earned from employment in the UK without social security being deducted. It did not matter that you had never lived in the US, or had left the US when the pension was built up.

The only exceptions were the part of the UK state pension attributable to voluntary contributions or a pension due to additional voluntary contributions, commonly known as AVCs or FSAVCs. The reason being that those payments were voluntary and not a requirement.

Each of us only paid 6 years of voluntary contributions - all the rest was from employment .......

WEP is gone, but in case anyone is confused and feels it was unfair or they were being penalized, you were not, because WEP was a mechanism to correct an inherent unfairness in the SS benefit formula:

SS benefits are based on average lifetime earnings calculated as the average inflation adjusted income over 35 years. But the ratio of benefits to income is not linear - the system has three ratios (two 'bend points' in the graph) and is biased to that low earners get proportionally more out of the system than higher earners.

So here's the problem: you, or any US public sector worker with earnings outside the SS system, will have years for which your apparent SS earnings for the year are zero. Your lifetime average therefore might seem quite low by the time you retire (for example you might have only 10 years in the SS system and 25 years of zeroes) and SS will give you a benefit ratio based on your apparent low income in the preferential first part of the curve (below the first bend point). BUT.... you and anyone outside the system weren't necessarily low income: you had income which doesn't show up in the computation of lifetime average. Had that income been in the SS system, some of your benefit would be calculated after the first or second bend point and thus would have a lower overall payout ratio. So those missing years outside the system effectively gave you more SS benefit than you deserved and WEP was a mechanism to correct that anomaly.

WEP was a mechanism to actually make the system fairer after this anomaly was detected in the 80's, and it's disingenuous of politicians to name the bill the 'SS Fairness Act' or whatever.

Thank you for this explanation..... I understand the situation much more clearly now.

I agree with the above that in many cases the WEP deduction was appropriate. Higher earning expats in particular are able to build up a decent social security payment with relatively few years contributions, making the return on investment for those social security contributions way higher than for those who contributed their entire working careers. On top of that expats usually benefit from an overseas pension which can put them ahead of anyone who spend their entire career in the US.

Case in point, my spouse and I have very similar earnings. He has only ever worked in the US, my career is 50% UK, 50% US. He will have a higher social security entitlement than me, but my combined social security and part of the UK state pension attributable to NI contributions paid through UK employment, will exceed his social security by some amount. The WEP that I was expecting would have reduced my combined total to something much closer to his SS amount thus equalizing things. So in our situation it can be argued that it was fair. When you add in voluntary NI contributions I am way ahead even if WEP had been applied.

I am happy WEP had been repealed but I do believe that for many of us it is indeed a windfall.

I've heard this argument before, and it seems to come down to "lower payout ratio." While mathematically correct, it doesn't seem relevant to me. The fact is everyone (except those effected by WEP) gets the same benefit on average income below the first bend (90%). But the person with only 10 years for contributions has a way lower average income than their actual income (in your 10-year example, their average income drops about 60%). So that person's potential for benefit is already greatly reduced. To cut the benefit down even further by dropping the 90% benefit down to 40% of average income, due to WEP, seems completely unfair. And missing years never "effectively gave you more SS benefit than you deserved." No, more years = more benefit; fewer years = less benefit.

The US assumes your other pension would already cover that initial 90%, I guess. WEP is/was a very crude tool that doesn't suit every situation. Some people did better from it and some did worse, but for the most part it was fair(ish), and very generous for many US people with excellent public pensions already. The fact still remains that SS was intended to help poorer people with smaller or no other pensions more, so the first part of the average wage calculation is covered up to 90%. People with 2 or more pensions were never the intended target for that more generous benefit, so WEP was introduced to eliminate it for those who had never even paid SS tax on their other salary. I don't think that people who opted out of social security can then fairly claim to use the same formula as low paid workers just because they paid some SS as well. After all, most workers pay SS tax their entire working lives and SS doesn't take all of it into account even though they didn't get to opt out of it for years.
I worked out what my SS would have been had I worked my entire life in the US, and it seems like WEP was unfair to me personally. Without WEP, I will be a little better off having both UK and US, but it's not by a lot.

As very well explained above WEP was meant to balance an anomaly where those who had a Federal pension, and low SS security payments, got a higher percentage SS. Like a lot of laws passed by people who only see one aspect of the problem, and don't understand the system, it entwined some (those who worked overseas) who couldn't pay SS. I wonder if at the outset of WEP they had included a provision to allow voluntary payments into SS, similar to the UK system, WEP would have been considered unfair.

Mrs L had 27 years of SS and lost about 20%. I paid nothing into SS but claimed on her account and got back 250% of what Mrs L lost. I have always considered we were not really owed anything.

Did Biden finally sign HR82? It is not showing up here: Legislation Archives | The White House. 6 days to go, or start over again.

It may have been one of the 50 bills signed yesterday, but I cannot find the definitive list and it does not yet show on The White House list.


Happy Christmas everyone