Retired Texas teachers — and other civil servants who receive state pensions — face penalties of up to 512 a month on Social Security benefits they earned in other jobs.When Myra Pilant prepared to retire from her job as a special education teacher in 2013, she typed her income information into the Social Security calculator and expected she’d be receiving about $1,000 a month once she retired, in addition to her Teacher Retirement System pension check.
“I had not even heard about the until I was getting ready to retire," Pilant said."My bottom-line is, I feel that is my money that I invested for over 20 years and should be getting back just like people that didn’t get a pension from the state. Teachers don’t typically get paid as much as other professionals, so why should we be penalized?”About 2.
The Democratic chairman and the top Republican on the House’s powerful Ways and Means Committee, U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, are both supportive of bipartisan reforms to Social Security. But Brady is retiring at the end of this term, and the committee will have new leadership after Republicans take the majority in January.
Newman’s husband had been a civil engineer and developer of commercial real estate, and his income — substantially larger than her own — had allowed the couple to live comfortably. After his death, a financial advisor told Newman that she was entitled to either her own Social Security benefits or her husband's or her husband’s, whichever was higher, as is normally the case.
Social Security payments are progressive, which means that higher-earning people receive a lower percentage of their income than lower-income people. The windfall elimination and pension offset rules assume that workers with civil service pensions are high-level earners, so they would receive artificially high Social Security checks on top of their pensions. So it cuts their Social Security income, saving the federal government billions of dollars.
Not all retired teachers are subject to the windfall elimination provision, which applies only to those teachers whose school districts did not withhold Social Security taxes. Some school districts participate in Social Security in addition to the Teacher Retirement System.
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