BLUF: it seems many people are not receiving their matching BRS contributions.
I’ve been in for 9 years and I’m maintaining my legacy retirement. However, when I get troops a couple things I look at are their LES, and TSP.
I ensure they have their accounts and know what’s going on.
Recently I have noticed that members have not been getting their matching. I even reviewed a captains TSP.Gov account and we could not find his matching contributions.
A couple questions.
Do you have to put money into traditional in order to receive the matching or can you do Roth and still receive it?
Where can I find a couple ways to verify that people are actually receiving their matching contributions?
Why does the matching HAVE to go to tradition? (Its the government, that checks)
How do you have your TSP set up in Mypay AND in your TSP.gov account?
BRS matching contributions
byu/intelligent_Sort1357 inMilitaryFinance
Posted by intelligent_Sort1357
6 Comments
1. Yes, you can do Roth.
2. Matching is listed on your LES.
3. Yes.
4. You should. How else are you going to see your money?
I haven’t heard of matching being missed out on for people that qualify it. You saying that you have multiple people is very odd. It’s pretty correct, except for very very few outliers.
Majority of the people I come across haven’t been vested yet. I haven’t met one person that met the TiS requirements not get it.
Yes it’s traditional. Why because tax brackets to help you maybe depending if you have other sources of income. But the government will make more.money from.your taxes later. You can check the les or tsp.gov for gov contributions.
Remember that matching starts in the 25th month of service.
Any TSP contribution, Traditional or Roth, counts towards service & agency matching.
Two places to easily verify whether matching contributions are occurring:
(1) LES in MyPay, last row of blocks (above the remarks section), “CM AGCY CONTR”, AGCY-AUTO should show 1% of base pay and AGC-MATCH should show 4% of base pay, if employee contribution rate is at least 5%.
(2) [TSP.gov](http://TSP.gov), the “Account Activity” tab splits out the Match & Automatic (1%) contributions from employee traditional/roth contributions and any gain/loss during the selected time period.
It’s pretty universal that employer TSP (or 401k) matching contributions are made pre-tax – I believe this is to the employer’s benefit for business payroll deductions, but someone else may have a better answer.
Not sure what your last question is getting at – you use MyPay to update your election %’s and Traditional vs Roth option for future contributions, and you use [TSP.gov](http://TSP.gov) to select your fund allocations and otherwise manage money within your TSP.
> Why does the matching HAVE to go to tradition? (Its the government, that checks)
Because until 2023 the IRS *required* employer contributions to be Traditional (technically it changed near the very end of 2022). However, this is optional for employers to implement, and TSP hasn’t said anything about implementing it so far.
Besides, the way this would work is if you were to choose this the matching would be added to your taxable income, as the company isn’t going to pay your taxes for you.