About $344 million in improper Supplemental Security Income payments is still collectible, while about $664 million is out of reach unless fraud or similar fault is established, the agency’s watchdog says. The split comes from a September 23 audit of earnings alerts that sat unresolved in SSA’s queues. Whether a mistaken payment can be collected depends largely on how quickly an employee opened the alert.
How an unanswered alert turns into a payment SSA cannot collect
SSI pays monthly cash to people who are aged, blind or disabled and have limited income and resources, and wages count against the check. When IRS or state wage data shows more earnings than a recipient reported for the tax year, SSA’s system generates an alert. According to the inspector general’s full report, staff must contact the recipient, verify the earnings, correct the record, pursue any overpayment and clear the alert.
The deadline that matters is a policy called administrative finality. SSA generally will not reopen an SSI decision more than 24 months old unless fraud or similar fault is involved. For a recipient with wages, the age of an overpayment, and not only its size, decides whether the agency can ask for it back.
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Staff meet the standard, called diligent pursuit, by finishing the review within six months after the alert is generated. When they do, SSA can revise decisions as far back as 24 months before the alert date and recover the overpayments. When they do not, the look-back runs only from the day an employee began the review, and the months that could have been revised “cannot be revised,” in the report’s words.
The report defines the two exceptions. Fraud is an intentional act to get benefits through false statements or concealment of material information. Similar fault is knowingly giving incorrect or incomplete information, or knowingly concealing material information. A delay inside the agency is neither, so the barred months stay barred.
The inspector general puts the barred amount at about $664 million, with a 90 percent statistical range of roughly $377 million to $951 million. Alerts that were still pending account for about $644 million of it. Alerts that staff cleared without recording all the wages account for about $19.9 million.
What 20 of 100 sampled cases showed
Auditors drew a random sample of 100 SSI recipients who had pending alerts. SSA employees resolved the alert appropriately in only 20 of them. In the other 80, the alert was either left unresolved or cleared without fully verifying the wage information.
For 63 recipients, the required review was never begun or never finished. Staff did not start 37 of those reviews and did not complete 26. The other 17 alerts were cleared, but not every earning that should have changed eligibility and payment was recorded.
One case in the report involved a father’s 2017 earnings, which affected his minor child’s SSI. The alert was issued July 2, 2018, appointments in June and July 2019 went unanswered, and the alert was still open in March 2026. About $36,000 was paid from October 2017 through December 2025, and only about $19,000 falls inside the window SSA can still reach if the review begins now.
A second case shows the cleared-alert problem. A September 2024 alert concerned 2023 earnings, and staff posted some wages before clearing it in June 2025 but left about $15,000 unposted. The recipient received $1,800 in April and May 2023 that would not have been payable, and SSA will neither revise nor recover it absent fraud or similar fault.
Auditors could not determine why staff did not act as policy requires, and the agency’s subject-matter experts could not explain it either. The inspector general made three recommendations: fix the 63 uncompleted alerts, fix the 17 incomplete ones, and find out why employees did not pursue or resolve alerts accurately. SSA agreed to all three, and a September 15 transmittal memo asks for a corrective action plan within 60 days.
The problem is not new. A December 2012 audit estimated about $110 million in preventable or recoverable overpayments for more than 25,000 recipients. SSA answered with reminder guidance and an evaluation that found working the alerts “would not be productive or cost-effective.”
What a recipient on the recoverable side faces
The roughly $344 million still within reach is almost all overpayments, about $341.6 million, plus about $2.4 million in underpayments that SSA owes recipients. Michelle L. Anderson, the assistant inspector general for audit serving as first assistant, said timely and thorough resolution of alerts “can also help SSA recover overpayments” before the finality limits take effect. Both figures are projections from the sample, not counts of notices.
A recipient with a recoverable overpayment gets a notice from SSA. According to the agency’s SSI overpayment page, the notice asks for a full refund within 30 days. If the money is not repaid and SSI continues, SSA proposes withholding the lesser of 10 percent or the entire monthly payment, and the notice names the month withholding begins.
A recipient who believes there was no overpayment, or that the amount is wrong, can ask for reconsideration. An appeal requested within 60 days of receiving the notice keeps current payments going until SSA decides. The notice must also explain how to ask for a waiver.
A waiver can be requested at any time on Form SSA-632-BK. For overpayments of $2,000 or less where the recipient was not at fault, a call to 1-800-772-1213 can serve instead. SSA generally grants a waiver when the recipient was not at fault and repayment would prevent paying for necessities, or would otherwise be unfair. A denial can be taken to reconsideration and then a hearing.
Form SSA-634 asks SSA to withhold less each month than the proposed amount. A person no longer receiving SSI can face a hold on a federal tax refund or on future Social Security benefits, or can arrange monthly payments. The open question for anyone holding such a notice is which clock is running: the 30-day refund request, the 60-day appeal or the withholding start month.
Holding an SSI notice with a 30-day clock on it?
An SSI overpayment notice starts several clocks at once: a 30-day request for a full refund, a 60-day window to appeal and keep payments going, and a proposed withholding of up to 10 percent of the monthly check. Recipients who answer the wrong one first can lose room to ask for a waiver or a lower rate.
The Social Security Check Protection Kit puts the three SSA forms that stop or pause collection (SSA-561, SSA-632 and SSA-634) and an overpayment response worksheet in one place, and Part 5 is a full overpayments playbook. The worksheet is built for the day a notice arrives and the response has to be sorted by date.
Get the SSI overpayment forms and response worksheet in the check protection kit →
More Financial Reading
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- 15 Places to Find Your Share of the $4.25 Billion States Give Back
- 17 Medicare Money Moves Now That Part D Caps at $2,400
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
