Civil service retirement plan benefits include payments from the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) or the Federal Employee’s Retirement System (FERS) as well as payments from Thrift Savings Plans (TSP). CSRS and FERS are defined benefit plans with employee contributions, and the TSP is a defined contribution plan similar to a 401(k) plan. TSP plans can be traditional or Roth plans. Distributions from these plans can be in the form of an annuity or a lump-sum payment and certain distributions may be rolled over to other plans.

In this course, we will discuss, the tax treatment of various retirement benefits paid to retirees, received by survivors of federal employees and retirees, disability benefits received by federal employees and retirees. This course provides a discussion of the tax treatment of the payments from the various civil service retirement plans to retirees or their survivors as well as covering other benefits available to civil service retirees.