There are many ways New York City Employees get benefitted from their service. The City of New York not only takes care of the present but the future of the employees as well. Planning for retirement and pension schemes is crucial to make the future secure. Well, the good news is The City of New York offers various systems to its employees through which they can easily secure their time after retirement and get a good pension to live comfortably. If you want to accumulate more info about this, you should pay attention to all the details related to the NYC pension plans.
Several types of pension plans are available for various departments of the City of New York. Typically, the number is five. So there are five pension systems available within this big city named New York. Starting from New York Employees, Board of Education to Fire Department and Teachers’- all the departments are benefitted from these NYC pension plans. Let’s have a look at the different programs one by one-
- What is New York Employees’ Retirement System?
New York Employees’ Retirement System is also known as NYCERS. NYCERS is the largest operating pension system among the five available pension plans operating within the City of New York. The reason for being the largest operating pension system is that all the employees of the City of New York, who cannot be categorized into a specific department, get help in their pension plans through this scheme. So, all the employees other than the uniformed agencies fall under this system.
- Details about New York City Board of Education Retirement System (BERS):
Among the other four pension systems, one of the most important ones is undoubtedly the Education Retirement System, also known by BERS. Let’s have a look at the list of people who get benefitted from this specific pension system-
- Employees from the City and School District of New York.
Some employees are excluded. Those are the employees retiring under the provisions of some different laws to retire. This is additional to the provisional and part-time employees of the Board of Education.
- What is the New York City Fire Department Pension Fund?
The firefighters and the fire officers are dominant parts of any city. They provide safety to people risking their own lives. The City of New York gives justified importance to these people by giving them a separate pension system altogether. This pension system is known as New York City Fire Department Pension Fund.
If anyone is willing to know more about this pension scheme, then they may call at the given number on the NYC website.
- New York City Police Pension Fund:
There is a separate pension fund dedicated to the police officials of the City of New York. The police officers protect the citizens of the city all the time. So, they deserve their future to be secured through a pension system. The pension plan dedicated to the police officers of the City of New York is the New York City Police Pension Fund. It is also known as NYCPPF. This pension plan serves to more than 39000 police officers operating in New York City.
- New York City Teachers’ Retirement System(TRS):
The last but not the least of the five operating pension schemes is New York City Teachers’ Retirement System, also known as TRS.
This pension plan is for some of the selected educators. They provide their service to the Department of Education of the New York City, the City University of New York and finally, the New York City Charter Schools.
- Points to be noted:
There are certain things about these pension plans that everyone should be aware of if they want to utilize them in the best possible way to secure their future. Let’s have a look at those details-
- The contributions made for pension do not get included in the gross income used for federal taxes. They are only treated in that way when the distribution is made as a benefit payment.
- On the other hand, one pays the Social Security, Medicare and the State and local taxes. So, the exclusion is only for federal taxes.
- The crucial thing to notice is that after retirement, one only needs to pay the federal taxes and not the other ones mentioned before when it comes to benefit payments.
- If someone takes a loan against the pension, the back payment gets done via deduction from the payment for the period.
- There are some people who ‘buy-back’ time. In their cases, they may choose for paying the buy-back via deductions made from the payroll.
So, if you want to utilize the pension plans in the best way to secure the future, you need to be aware of different plans and their different details.