Arizona Laws 38-853.01. Redemption of prior service; calculation
A. Except as provided in subsection B of this section, an active member of the system who has at least five years of service with the system may elect to redeem up to sixty months of any part of the following prior service or employment by paying into the system any amounts required under subsection C of this section if the prior service or employment is not on account with any other retirement system:
Terms Used In Arizona Laws 38-853.01
- Accumulated contributions: means , for each member, the sum of the amount of the member's aggregate contributions made to the fund and the amount, if any, attributable to the employee's contributions before the member's effective date under another public retirement system, other than the federal social security act, and transferred to the fund minus the benefits paid to or on behalf of the member. See Arizona Laws 38-842
- Annuity: A periodic (usually annual) payment of a fixed sum of money for either the life of the recipient or for a fixed number of years. A series of payments under a contract from an insurance company, a trust company, or an individual. Annuity payments are made at regular intervals over a period of more than one full year.
- Board: means the board of trustees of the system, who are the persons appointed to invest and operate the fund. See Arizona Laws 38-842
- Certified peace officer: means a peace officer certified by the Arizona peace officer standards and training board. See Arizona Laws 38-842
- Corporation: A legal entity owned by the holders of shares of stock that have been issued, and that can own, receive, and transfer property, and carry on business in its own name.
- Credited service: means the member's total period of service before the member's effective date of participation, plus those compensated periods of the member's service thereafter for which the member made contributions to the fund. See Arizona Laws 38-842
- Direct rollover: means a payment by the system to an eligible retirement plan that is specified by the distributee. See Arizona Laws 38-842
- Employee: means any person who is employed by a participating employer and who is a member of an eligible group but does not include any persons compensated on a contractual or fee basis. See Arizona Laws 38-842
- Service: means the last period of continuous employment of an employee by the employers before the employee's retirement, except that if such period includes employment during which the employee would not have qualified as a member had the system then been effective, such as employment as a volunteer firefighter, then only twenty-five percent of such noncovered employment shall be considered as service. See Arizona Laws 38-842
- State: means the state of Arizona, including any department, office, board, commission, agency or other instrumentality of this state. See Arizona Laws 38-842
- System: means the public safety personnel retirement system established by this article. See Arizona Laws 38-842
- United States: includes the District of Columbia and the territories. See Arizona Laws 1-215
1. Prior service in this state as an employee with an employer now covered by the system or prior service with an agency of the United States government, a state of the United States or a political subdivision of this state or of a state of the United States as a full-time paid firefighter, full-time paid certified peace officer or full-time paid corrections officer engaged in law enforcement duties.
2. Subject to any limitations prescribed by federal law, prior employment as an employee of a corporation that contracted with an employer now covered by the system to provide firefighting services on behalf of that employer as a full-time paid firefighter or that provided firefighting services for a political subdivision of this state.
B. An active member who became a member of the system before January 1, 2012 may redeem any amount of eligible prior service as specified in subsection A of this section without having to have accrued any minimum amount of credited service.
C. An active member who elects to redeem any part of the prior service or employment for which the employee is deemed eligible by the board under this section shall pay into the system the amounts previously withdrawn by the member, if any, as a refund of the member’s accumulated contributions plus accumulated interest as determined by the board and the additional amount, if any, computed by the system’s actuary that is necessary to equal the increase in the actuarial present value of projected benefits resulting from the redemption calculated using the actuarial methods and assumptions prescribed by the system’s actuary.
D. A member electing to redeem service pursuant to this section may pay for service being redeemed in the form of a lump sum payment to the system, a trustee-to-trustee transfer or a direct rollover of an eligible distribution from a plan described in section 402(c)(8)(B)(iii), (iv), (v) or (vi) of the internal revenue code or a rollover of an eligible distribution from an individual retirement account or annuity described in section 408(a) or (b) of the internal revenue code.