DaveF1006, thank you for replying!
BLUF: Would the only way to flesh this out be to hire a tax attorney? If so, I could start working on it for next year.
2020 thru 2024 NCDOR Personal Tax Bulletins all have the same vesting verbiage for the NC local/state government retirees vs Federal government retirees. NC qualified plans are written to require the payback but the federal qualified plans paragraphs don't mention the payback.
I definitely meet the 5 year criteria, CSRS, Aug79 -Apr85, then then left for 11 months, and came back in May86, and finally retired in 2020.
Called NCDOR two weeks ago and after going through about 4 people and numerous phones calls I finally had a call back from an NCDOR expert, and they said the NC local/state government pay back requirement applied to the federal CSRS retirees..
I asked why are paragraphs in the state section and federal section are written differently? Basically they did not know.
