The Employee Data topic will vary depending on whether individual or group calculation has been selected. For individual calculation, this topic lets you specify the individual’s known demographic information. For group calculation, instead you specify the database containing the pertinent age or date fields, along with a Salary Definition. You also specify the field in which the PIA amount will be saved.

The Name and SSN in the individual calculation are for documentation only. You may leave them blank if you wish.

The Date of birth determines Full Retirement Age, age for merit salary scale (if any), and varies the amount of late retirement credits.

The Date of hire determines hire age for the salary start age parameter (see following discussion) and service for salary merit scale (if any).

The date of Termination determines when salary, national average wage and CPI increases stop applying (see the discussion of Increase Rates for more detail).  The date of termination can be entered as January of the law year, and Age in years and months, or a Date in month/year (m/y) format.

The number of months between the date of Commencement and full retirement (at social security normal retirement age) determines the number of months of reduction or credit for early or late retirement, respectively. In addition, the last year of salary and CPI application will be the year prior to commencement. The date of commencement can be entered as SSNRA, and Age in years and months, or a Date in month/year (m/y) format, and can be overridden to the date of Termination if later. To turn off the calculation of the reduction (credit) for commencement before (after) Full Retirement Age, uncheck the Reduce (increase) PIA for early (late) retirement box, accessible if commencement is not at SSNRA. (See the discussion of PIA Calculations Output for details.)

Specify the first non-zero salary to be considered in the PIA calculation (but not earlier than 1951) by completing the parameters for Salary history starts at:  You may choose either Hire age or specify an Age, such as age 20.  If an age is specified, you may optionally check the box or hire age if earlier.

The individual Salary history or group Salary Definition must contain at least the most recent year’s salary. Not all salaries in the salary history need to be provided. However, there cannot be any blank imbedded values amongst the years that are provided. Salaries for all years prior to the earliest year provided will be filled in by projecting backward according to the salary scale. The salary history automatically spans the years beginning with the start age (but not earlier than 1951) and ending with the law year (or, if earlier, the year of termination or commencement). Note that, in order to specify historical salaries, the year of hire must be earlier than the year of termination, the year of commencement and the law year.

Indicate that a disability PIA (for a disabled disability insured worker under full, aka social security normal, retirement age) should be calculated, instead of a retirement PIA (old-age benefit for a fully insured worker beginning at about age 62 or later), by checking the Perform a disability PIA calculation box. For a disability PIA calculation, for termination at an age prior to the social security normal retirement age (SSNRA), benefit payments are presumed to commence at termination (the worker need not have attained age 62 in order to collect benefits). For termination ages at or after SSNRA, ProVal performs a retirement PIA calculation (and thus some commencement parameters are inaccessible when the disability PIA box is checked); see U.S. social security PIA calculations for details. The parameter for salaries after termination (found under the Salary Projection topic) is also inapplicable (and thus its setting is ignored).

The PIA (whether retirement or disability) will always be calculated as defined under the new wage-indexed method (which computes an Average Indexed Monthly Earnings, or AIME) prescribed by the 1977 Amendments to the Social Security Act, regardless of whether current law frozen in year is selected and, if so, whether a year prior to the effective date of the 1977 Amendments is indicated.