Glossary

Windfall Elimination Provision: What It Was, and Why It's Gone

By Michael Ashmore  ·  13 Aug 2026  ·  5 min read
The US Capitol building under a dramatic cloudy sky
The Social Security Fairness Act, which repealed WEP and GPO, was signed into law in January 2025. Photo: Harold Mendoza / Unsplash

About the author: Michael Ashmore is a British expat in the US who built RetireFlexi after discovering that no retirement calculator could handle pensions in two countries at once. He writes about the financial side of expat retirement that most guides skip.

The Windfall Elimination Provision was a US rule that cut your Social Security benefit if you also drew a pension from work not covered by Social Security tax — foreign state pensions included. It was repealed in January 2025. If you're reading advice, an old spreadsheet, or a forum thread that tells you to reduce your Social Security estimate because of WEP, that advice is out of date.

What WEP actually did

Social Security's benefit formula is deliberately generous to lower earners — it replaces a larger share of income for someone with modest lifetime earnings than for someone who earned a lot. The formula has no way to see foreign earnings. Someone who spent 20 years working in the UK and paying into National Insurance instead of Social Security looked, on paper, like a low earner for their entire career, because those UK years showed up as zeros in the US record.

WEP existed to correct that. It applied a less generous version of the benefit formula to anyone drawing a pension from non-covered work, reducing the Social Security payment by up to roughly $600 a month, with the exact amount depending on years of substantial US earnings — the reduction phased out entirely once you had 30 or more such years.

GPO — the related rule people confuse it with

The Government Pension Offset was a separate provision. Where WEP reduced your own retirement benefit, GPO reduced Social Security spousal or survivor benefits for someone receiving a government pension from non-covered work. Different mechanism, same underlying logic, same repeal.

What changed in January 2025

The Social Security Fairness Act was signed into law in January 2025, repealing both WEP and GPO in full. Anyone drawing a foreign state pension — a UK State Pension, for example — alongside US Social Security no longer has their Social Security reduced because of it. The Social Security Administration has been processing retroactive back payments for people who were affected before the repeal.

Practically, this means one thing when you're estimating your own benefit: use the number from your actual Social Security statement, unadjusted. No manual haircut, no percentage knocked off for having a foreign pension. That correction is no longer necessary.

Where this actually comes up

Mostly for people combining US Social Security with a UK State Pension, an Australian pension, a Canadian CPP, or a German or Dutch state pension after working in more than one country. The mechanics of how two independent pensions combine — and how to model them together rather than estimate them separately — are covered in the full US-UK pension guide and the calculator walkthrough, both updated for the post-repeal rules.

Model both pensions without the old WEP adjustment

Enter your full Social Security estimate alongside a foreign state pension and see the combined income in one place.

✦ Open the Calculator — it's free
Not financial advice. This article describes current US law as of the Social Security Fairness Act (January 2025). Individual circumstances vary — verify your own benefit at ssa.gov and consult a qualified adviser for personalized guidance.