Purpose

To clarify certain retirement transaction requirements and inform agencies of corrections made by OSC to data errors.

Affected Employees

1. Retired members of the New York State Teachers' Retirement System (TRS - Plan Type 7X) who have been rehired.
2. Retired members of the New York State Employees' Retirement System (ERS - Plan Type 7Y) who may or may not have been rehired.
3. Employees with a change in retirement election in the same record number.

Effective Date

Immediately

Important Requirements/ Reminders

1. When an agency rehires a retired TRS member and a new row is inserted on the Retirement Plans page, RETD should be entered in the registration number field. This allows the employee's wage information to be reported to TRS, while flagging the employee as a retiree. No other variation in spelling is acceptable. Other spellings cause incorrect reporting on W-2's.
2. RETD should never be used in the registration number field for employees enrolled in ERS (or any other retirement system). A valid 8-digit numeric registration number should be entered for all active employees with an active ERS enrollment. Retirees should not have an active retirement row.
3. OSC staff run a query each week to identify and correct employees with duplicate active retirement rows in the same record number. This includes employees who previously elected Plan Type 7R, No Retirement Selection, and are now being enrolled in a retirement plan. To avoid this situation, agencies should insert a row to terminate one retirement election before inserting a row to begin another.

OSC Actions

OSC has:

1. Corrected all registration numbers that were any variation of RETD for employees with a TRS enrollment.
2. Inserted a row to terminate retirement for all employees with an ERS enrollment and a registration number that is any variation of RETD.
3. Corrected all duplicate records to date.

Agency Actions

Implement appropriate procedural changes.

Questions

Questions regarding this bulletin may be directed to Payroll Deductions mailbox.