Coding Errors in DoD Employee Retirement Contributions

The federal workforce is subject to a four-tiered pension under the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) and three different tiers of the Federal Employees’ Retirement System (FERS). You can find which tier you’re in by looking at Block 30 of your most recent SF-50. Within FERS, employees hired in 2013 under FERS-Revised Annuity Employees (RAE) are paying 2.3% more than those hired earlier, and those hired after 2014 under FERS-Further Revised Annuity Employees (FRAE) are paying 3.6% more. But despite paying more, neither FERS-RAE nor FERS-FRAE employees have any corresponding benefit increase.
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To make matters worse, coding errors have recently been identified throughout DoD with many employees having been assigned to the wrong FERS tier and, as a result, receiving either an overpayment or underpayment of salary due to the difference in contribution rates.

If you’ve received a notification that you’ve been miscoded, please reach out to your local union representative for help in getting a fair resolution of the issue.