PERS is humming along these days, fixing up the COLA fiasco for those of us who retired before October 1, 2013. If you happen to have a PERS online account (PERS’ OIS system) - and I highly recommend you having one - you can check where your account is in the processing of back COLA adjustments. If you log into your account, you can drill down to see what your benefit will be on November 1, after all the adjustments to the COLA going back to 2013 have been made. If you dig a bit deeper, by using the left side (purple on my computer) detailed listings, you should be able to see the one-time payment for the COLAs not given, but owed, since July 1, 2013. I’ve noticed a couple of things about the PERS site and the way the adjustments get made. First, the adjustments appear to be made in steps, so that if you go onto the site today, you might see your November 1 benefit and think it might be too low. That certainly happened to me. By the time PERS brought the website back up after routine weekend maintenance, my November 1 benefit had been adjusted a second (or maybe a third) time with the amount nearly identical to my own computations (roundoff may account for the slight difference). The second thing you might notice if you find your one-time restoration of benefits payment, is that the tax rate seems unusually high. This is not an error; it is a quirk of the IRS withholding tables when you get a one-off payment in the middle of a month where you get another check for the whole month. Many have noticed this surprise. Either consider it good news because you’ve prepaid more taxes for next April; or good news because your refund will be higher. On the flip side, many of us have noted that the one-off COLA restoration check does not withhold State Income Taxes. This is true for some people, but not for others. We have not figured out what the trigger is, but suspect it has to do with (1) the amount of the gross; (2) married or single; (3) number of exemptions. Mine did not show any state withholding, which for me is not good news.
Anyway, many of the checks seem to be scheduled to be paid on October 14th, so some of us will be getting our “bonus” just in time for the property tax bills to arrive. My “bonus” will pay my property taxes in Deschutes County, and the leftover will head on to Clackamas County, along with a lot more money. Regardless of the amount, I am very happy to be getting it, and am grateful to the Oregon Supreme Court and the PERS Coalition for showing the Legislature how foolish they were to go after this benefit.
If you retired on or after October 1, 2013, you can expect this same experience in the early days of next year. And, you’ll probably enjoy the use of the money as much as those of us who retired earlier will now.
I offer PERS a “high five” for taking this bull by the horns and just getting it done as quickly as possible.
