Military pay dates and TSP year allocation

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chairfly
Posts: 7
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2012 10:17 am

Military pay dates and TSP year allocation

Post by chairfly »

Hi Folks,

Question from a uniformed services guy. I'm not sure if this applies to the civilian side as well.

We obviously get paid on the 1st and 15th. So, when a contribution is applied Jan 1 2015, that contribution technically came from December 2014 pay. Is that money counted toward the 2015 or 2014 tax year?

Thanks for the input!

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Navig8tor
Posts: 562
Joined: Mon Jul 19, 2010 10:48 am

Re: Military pay dates and TSP year allocation

Post by Navig8tor »

That'll go towards your 2014 contribution limit.

That and as far as I know, the December 2014 contribution hit when it was supposed to...in December. The January contribution was jacked up for some reason. Such that the TSP website will show you had two contributions in February (February 9th and February 26th - if you're active duty)

I don't think it matters one way or the other unless you're contributing MORE than the max allowable yearly contribution. Say you max out your yearly contribution in November...the TSP just won't accept your December contribution (from what the TSP told me).
Navig8tor
CWO4 (BOSN)
USCG, RET

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TSPsmart
Posts: 212
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2014 12:24 pm

Re: Military pay dates and TSP year allocation

Post by TSPsmart »

chairfly,
Interesting question. I would think that since it did not matter that you earned the money in 2014, the fact that you got paid in 2015 is when the income will be recorded then the same will go for the TSP contribution.

You might check old pay statements to verify. Your 1 January 2014 paycheck should have been recorded in 2014 even though you earned it in 2013.

I remember one year getting 3 paychecks for December and was not happy with the extra income that year since I was affected by the minimum alternate tax that year.

How's the chair flying going?

Zilla
Posts: 23
Joined: Mon Jun 04, 2012 1:17 pm

Re: Military pay dates and TSP year allocation

Post by Zilla »

I had the same question when I did my taxes. I went back and compared pay statements, my W-2, and my TSP end of year statement. The TSP contribution from your Dec 2014 pay is applied in 2014, as far as pay & taxes go, even though it doesn't actually show up in your TSP account until the first few days of Jan. You'll see that your W-2 "401 k" amount matches your Jan-Dec pay statements, but the annual contributions reported by TSP are based on the date they arrived in your account, so they don't match. It's a bit confusing, but that's the way DFAS does it (at least in my case)...

chairfly
Posts: 7
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2012 10:17 am

Re: Military pay dates and TSP year allocation

Post by chairfly »

Hey thanks a lot for those responses guys. Now that we can't simply put a dollar amount for our Roth contribution I'm having a harder time trying to get to the max. I know that if I go over they are supposed to adjust for that but I would like to avoid that if possible. Thanks again.

And yes TSPsmart. Chairflying often! Practice makes perfect ;) or close to it...

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