Whenever an employee is hired or changes positions, TRS membership eligibility requirements must be applied at the time that the person is hired or the job agreement changes. If the employee was previously working in a position that was not TRS eligible, but the new position meets all of the TRS eligibility criteria, they must be reported as TRS eligible going forward with the new position.
To report a member who changes to an eligible position, the Reporting Employer (RE) will need to submit an ED45 to end the ineligible position and add the eligible position, as long as there is no gap in employment. The RE must submit the ED45 in the report month in which the position changes. In the example shown below, the ED45 should be submitted with the December 2020 reports.
A tutor (position code 03) was originally hired to work for the entire 2025-26 school year in a less than half-time (not TRS eligible) position. The original ED40 should look like this:
Effective Dec. 1, 2025 the employee began a half-time or more position as a tutor with the same position code 03 and will continue working in that position until the end of the school year. The employer submitted an ED45 to end the non-eligible position and add the eligible position. The contracts for this employee should look like this after the ED45 posts to the system:
It can also be challenging to report on an employee transitioning from an ineligible position to a TRS-eligible position when it comes to creditable compensation. Many REs pay in arrears, which causes the final compensation for the ineligible position to be paid in the month after the ineligible position ended. The report-when-paid rule requires REs to report the employee’s compensation to TRS in the month it is paid, regardless of when it was earned. If compensation was earned while the employee was working in an ineligible position, then it must be reported as only Total Gross Compensation and no contributions may be withheld on the pay from the ineligible position.
Let’s say the employee in our example above concludes their ineligible position in November, and then the compensation for the time they worked is paid in December. Since the time worked for the ineligible position was paid in December, the compensation is not considered creditable compensation, and contributions should not be withheld on the pay from the ineligible position.
The tutor is paid $1,500 in December for time worked Nov. 1, 2025-Nov. 30, 2025. The $1,500 is not subject to member and employer contributions on the December 2025 Regular Payroll (RP) report. In December, the RE will report the employee as earning only Total Gross Compensation, but the days and hours for the eligible position must be included on this RP20 record for December.
If the same employee receives compensation for their prior ineligible position and new TRS-eligible position in the same report month, and the position codes are the same, the current month RP20 record will include both Total Gross Compensation and TRS-Eligible Gross Compensation.
Compensation earned by the employee when they worked in the eligible position will be reported as TRS-Eligible Gross Compensation. The Total Gross Compensation will include the compensation paid for both positions since this field is to report eligible and ineligible compensation.
If the positions fall under separate position codes, two current month RP records must be reported.
The tutor is paid $500 in December for time worked Nov. 12, 2025-Nov. 30, 2025, and $750 for time worked Dec. 1, 2025-Dec. 15, 2025. The $500 earned in the ineligible position is not subject to member and employer contributions on the December 2020 RP report; this amount should only be included on the Total Gross Compensation field of the RP20 record for December 2025. The $750 earned in the eligible position is subject to member and employer contributions since it was earned while working in an eligible position. Total Gross Compensation will be $1,250. The RP20 for this example would look like this:
The hours and days reported on the December 2025 RP report should include all days and hours the employee worked or used paid leave for the calendar month of December 2025. Please keep in mind that REs are only permitted to report scheduled days or hours if the person does not track their time in any way. If the employee tracks their time, the employer must report the actual time worked in the calendar month.