Social Security Fairness Act: What It Is and Will It Affect You

on January 12, 2025

Some people haven’t received all their Social Security benefits, even though they paid into the system. A new law changes that.

  • The Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset reduced Social Security payments for beneficiaries with certain pensions.
  • The Social Security Fairness Act eliminates these provisions.
  • President Joe Biden signed the bill into law on Jan. 5, 2025.
  • The Social Security Administration says it is evaluating how to implement the law.

Government pensions are valuable retirement benefits, but they have long come with a downside. A non-covered pension had the potential to reduce someone’s Social Security benefits by hundreds of dollars each month.

That’s because of two provisions of law: the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset, commonly known as WEP and GPO. Each reduced the Social Security benefits of someone who also receives a pension from a job that did not pay taxes into the system.

“There was this concern initially that they were double-dipping,” says Yuval Bar-Or, a professor at the John Hopkins Carey Business School. It was deemed that someone receiving a government pension should not also receive Social Security benefits under the same formula as a retiree with no similar pension.

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