Historically, when an incorrect or overpayment of benefits occurred you would receive an overpayment notice that would demand full repayment within 30 days or your benefits would be placed in full withholding for repayment. Understandably, this could be alarming to the beneficiary who depends on their SSA payments for their monthly bills. If you didn’t agree with the full recovery, you could file an appeal or waiver request of the overpaid funds or negotiate a repayment agreement. The repayment agreement had to be within 36 months or your financial situation would need to be evaluated in order for lower withholding to be accepted.
Effective March 25, 2024, if an overpayment occurs your notification will no longer demand full repayment or full withholding but will automatically establish 10% withholding from your benefit for repayment. If you disagree with this, you can negotiate repayment within 60 months without the need for income, expenses, or resources having to be evaluated. Of course some exceptions to this will apply such as when the overpayment was the result of fraud.
If you are already in a repayment agreement with SSA that exceeds 10% of your benefit rate, you can request an adjustment in your withholding. Everyone’s entitlement is unique and you can reach out to SSA to see what, if any, adjustments you think could apply to your situation.
Of course you still have the right to appeal any incorrect or overpayment occurrence on your record. You can file a waiver, which means the debt will be forgiven entirely if you were not at fault in the creation of the overpayment AND you do not have the ability to repay it. Both of these criteria need to be met for a waiver to be approved. Being found not at fault means you had no knowledge of the overpayment happening and exercised good care and caution in the receipt of your benefits. This means you complied with all of your reporting responsibilities timely to SSA for any situation in which you new or should have known your action or inaction could result in receipt of incorrect payments from the administration.
If you disagree with the fact or amount of the overpayment, basically you believe SSA is completely wrong and there is no overpayment, you can file an appeal that you shouldn’t have to repay anything since you believe no overpayment exists. Sometimes this can happen with something as simple as the earnings reported to SSA by the IRS were in fact not wages but other taxable income that is not counted as wages by SSA. In this case scenario, when you provide proof of actual earnings, SSA can adjust the countable wages and that could eliminate an overpayment based the corrected earned income updated to your record.
In any case scenario, receiving an overpayment notification from SSA is an unsettling experience. You need to be aware of your options and work with SSA for the repayment agreement that best works for you.
Maryellen Eckert EDPNA
