...[I]n some cases, retired beneficiaries may continue to work while receiving Social Security benefits. In those instances, Title II of the Social Security Act (Act) requires that SSA use an Annual Earnings Test (AET) to measure the extent of beneficiaries' retirement and determine the amount, if any, to be deducted from their monthly benefits. The Act provides for a two tier earnings test: one for beneficiaries under full retirement age and another for beneficiaries in the year they attain full retirement age. ...To ensure compliance with the AET provisions, SSA compares beneficiaries’ reported earnings that are recorded on SSA’s Master Beneficiary Record (MBR) with earnings that were reported by employers that are recorded on SSA’s Master Earnings File (MEF). This process, called the Earnings Enforcement Operation (EEO), is designed to detect over- or underpayments that may have occurred during the year.
Our 2007 audit of the AET disclosed SSA had not adjusted the benefit payments of all beneficiaries who were identified by the EEO. As a result, SSA overpaid about $313 million to 89,300 beneficiaries and underpaid about $35 million to 12,800 beneficiaries for Calendar Years (CY) 2002 through 2004. In addition, we found SSA had not processed approximately 2.1 million of the 2.5 million Earnings Enforcement selections for CYs 1996 through 2005. We made several recommendations to improve the EEO, including that SSA review and process, as appropriate, all Earnings Enforcement selections pending since 1996.
RESULTS OF REVIEW
SSA had not made significant progress to resolve the 2.5 million Earnings Enforcement selections. Of the approximately 2.1 million Earnings Enforcement selections that were pending at the time of our prior audit, we found SSA had only processed about 337,500 (16.1 percent). In addition, our review disclosed there was a substantial number of improper payments in the backlog for the affected beneficiaries.
Based on a random sample of 275 beneficiaries, we estimate SSA
• overpaid about $956 million to 616,459 beneficiaries and
• underpaid about $245 million to 181,312 beneficiaries
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Aug 8, 2009
No Progress On Earnings Enforcement
From a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General:
SSA should be enforcing the AET - however, many times a balance must be struck between looking for people who MAY be overpaid (depending on non work months in the year of retirement) or in paying those who have filed and are waiting for their benefits to begin. In an ideal world, SSA would have sufficient staff to do absolutlely everything it should do. Until that Utopia dawns the agency will generally opt to work on the new claims and only do as much PE as Congress budgets for that.
ReplyDeleteConsidering that benefit authorizers are limited both in their time and in their numbers, would OIG recommend that SSA's managers utilize their BAs' work time to process disability and other types of awards, or to process earnings enforcement cases? Has OIG considered that if BAs didn't have to spike, they might be able to do both?
ReplyDeleteHave any SSA managers even thought to tell OIG about this situation?