It was not until Verdaillia Turner went to fill out the paperwork for her retirement from Atlanta Public Schools that she had any idea that she might not receive the Social Security benefits she paid into over the years.
“I’ve always worked another job at the same time that I was teaching school. All of my life. I’ve been working since I was 16,” Turner said.
But a federal law that dates back to 1983 called the Windfall Elimination Provision – nicknamed WEP – and the government pension offset reduce Social Security benefits for nearly 3 million Americans, mostly public servants who receive a pension from a job that did not pay Social Security taxes, even if other jobs they held through the years did pay into Social Security.
“What happens is that we are unduly penalized. We don’t get the money that we paid into,” Turner said.
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