Updated July 28, 2026. Quick answer: WEP reduced the benefit on your own earnings record. GPO reduced a benefit you claimed on someone else’s record — as a spouse, widow or widower. They were separate provisions doing different arithmetic to different people, and many were affected by one and not the other. Neither exists any longer.
The two provisions side by side
| WEP | GPO | |
|---|---|---|
| Which benefit it reduced | Your own retirement or disability benefit | Spouse’s, widow(er)’s, mother’s or father’s benefit |
| How it worked | Substituted a lower percentage at the first bend point of the benefit formula | Subtracted two-thirds of your noncovered government pension |
| Could it reduce you to zero? | No — it was capped | Yes, routinely |
| Old statutory home | 42 U.S.C. §415(a)(7) | 42 U.S.C. §402(k)(5) |
The mechanical difference is the reason GPO felt so much harsher. WEP shaved a formula. GPO subtracted a large fixed amount — and because two-thirds of a full career government pension frequently exceeded the whole spousal benefit, it often produced a benefit of exactly zero. Not reduced. Gone.
Who GPO could reach
The repealed text listed the benefits it applied to by subsection — spouse, widow(er), mother’s and father’s benefits. It required noncovered government service during “any portion of the last 60 months of such service.” That last-60-months condition is why some people who spent most of a career in noncovered work escaped it entirely.
Who WEP could reach
WEP applied only to someone who reached 62 after 1985 and first became eligible after 1985 for a pension based on noncovered work. The statute carved out railroad retirement, foreign totalization payments and pensions based wholly on uniformed service. And it never applied at all to anyone with 30 years of coverage.
No dollar amounts appear on this page, deliberately. The earnings-test exempt amounts are wage-indexed under 42 U.S.C. §403(f)(8)(B), the benefit formula bend points reset every year under §415(i), and full retirement age is a schedule that varies by birth year under §416(l). Any figure printed in an article is wrong within a year. Take current figures from the Social Security Administration directly, and take your own numbers from your Social Security statement.
Sources
Public Law 118-273, the Social Security Fairness Act of 2023, enacted 5 January 2025. The repealed provisions are quoted from the 2023 edition of the United States Code — 42 U.S.C. §415(a)(7) (WEP) and §402(k)(5) (GPO) — because they no longer appear in the 2024 edition, which is itself the record of the repeal. Editorial notes to 42 U.S.C. §402 and §415 (2024 edition) confirm each struck paragraph.
This states what the cited authority says. It is not tax advice, and retirement-plan design turns on facts about your business and your other entities that no page can see. Every dollar limit referenced here is indexed and changes annually.