Q: Under the Federal Employees Retirement System, after 20 years, your annuity is figured at 0.011 percent of your high-3 salary average multiplied by your years of service. Below 20 years, the percentage used is 0.01. With the new law allowing 50 percent of unused sick time to be used for annuity calculations, can that time also be used to meet the 20-years-of-service criterion? A: Let’s first get the computational facts straight. The standard FERS formula is as follows: 0.01 x your high-3 x your years of creditable service. The 0.011 multiplier is only used if you retire at age…
Browsing: unused leave
Q: I currently have an employee who insists on retiring at the end of the current year. This individual has agreed to work as a part-time rehired annuitant for a period not to exceed one year. The issue is this: She has 240 hours of carry-over leave, 168 hours of unused leave for this year and 120 hours of restored leave. Can the individual get paid for the leave and return to work immediately? A: No. She would lose any leave that exceeded 240 hours, and that 240 hours would be carried over to her temporary position. Because unused leave is…
Q: I plan to retire at the end of this calendar year under the Civil Service Retirement System. My tour of duty is 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday thought Friday. Everything I read says the optimum date to retire is Dec. 31. Human resources says I can only retire on the first, second or third of the month, and they want me to retire Jan. 1. It is my understanding that there is no advantage to retiring after Dec. 31 because the weekend days aren’t paydays and if I retire Jan. 1, I will lose one day of my…
Q: I have 70.5 days of annual leave and will be separating very soon via a Medical Evaluation Board on a service-connected disability. Am I allowed to sell my annual leave? Are there any pros and cons? A: All civilian employees who separate from the government either by resigning or retiring automatically receive a lump-sum payment for their unused annual leave.
Q: I will be retiring from the Postal Service through the Civil Service Retirement System shortly. Will I be paid for any holidays that occur during my accrued annual leave? A: At retirement, unused annual leave is projected forward. The amount of money you receive in a lump-sum payment will be identical to what you would have received if you were still on the job working eight hours a day, 40 hours a week and 80 hours a pay period.
Q: As a federal civil service employee in the Defense Department, I usually have several days of use/lose annual leave at the end of the year. Rather than taking off almost the entire month of December to avoid losing accrued annual leave, am I allowed to sell back the unused leave? A: There is no provision in law that would allow you to be paid for unused annual leave that exceeds the carryover amount from one leave year to the next.