Overview

Prior to 1984, most Federal employees in career appointments were covered by the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS). The Social Security Amendments of 1983 required that newly-hired Federal employees become covered by Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI), for which deductions were withheld. Because there was not yet another retirement plan in place, these employees also paid into CSRS at a reduced rate. This system which combined CSRS and Social Security was called CSRS-Interim Retirement System and existed from 1984-1986. In addition to covering newly hired employees, CSRS-Interim also covered rehired Federal employees who returned to employment after a break in service for more than 1 year. On January 1, 1987, the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) was implemented. At that time, the CSRS-Interim System became known as the CSRS-Offset Retirement System. On January 1, 2013, seven codes were implemented to FERS and the Foreign Service Pension System (FSPS), to accommodate the legislatively-mandated Revised Annuity Employees (RAE). In April 2014, seven alphanumeric plan codes were added to FERS to accommodate the employees and members of Congress who will be covered under FERS as Further Revised Annuity Employees (FRAE), as detailed in the Office of Personnel Management's (OPM) Benefits Administration Letter (BAL) 14-102.