From a notice that the Social Security Administration is publishing in the Federal Register on Monday:
We are announcing a demonstration project for the Social Security disability program under title II of the Social Security Act (Act). Under this project, we will modify program rules applied to beneficiaries who work and receive title II disability benefits. We are required to conduct the Promoting Opportunity Demonstration (POD), in compliance with section 823 of the Bipartisan Budget Act (BBA) of 2015.
In this project, we will test simplified work incentives and use a benefit offset based on earnings as an alternative to rules we currently apply to title II disability beneficiaries who work. Under the benefit offset, we will reduce title II disability benefits by $1 for every $2 that a beneficiary earns above a certain threshold.
We will select beneficiaries and offer them the opportunity to volunteer for the project . When we make the selection, we will include beneficiaries who receive title II disability benefits only as well as beneficiaries who receive both title II disability benefits and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) based on disability or blindness under title XVI of the Act.This amounts to a 50% tax on earnings on top of the regular taxes the worker is already paying. This is supposed to encourage people to work?
In any case, it won't matter what incentives they give; few of these disabled people have the capacity to do any significant amount of work. They're too sick. That's why their disability claims were approved. Getting approved is very tough. They're not going to get better. Almost all the people who had a realistic hope of getting better never got on benefits in the first place because of the one year duration requirement. If you haven't gotten better after a year, you're probably never going to get better.
By the way, the abbreviation POD already has an established meaning at Social Security -- Period Of Disability. I wish they wouldn't try to use that for something else related to disability benefits. It's confusing.
14 comments:
They also use it to mean Potential Onset Date
You are misunderstanding this rule as a 50% tax. It would be used instead of the current system where wage earners earning over a certain threshold lose their check entirely.
They will come out ahead in the end.
Hence, why they will be given the option to opt-in.
damn that's grim. Is that what you tell your clients, yeah your disabled and you're never going to get better, game over man.
I concede a lot of beneficiaries can't work at all. However, I have seen many CDR claims where people have gotten a lot better.
Why don't we just pay everyone and anyone that wants to work can.
Read the bottom of page 8. They will ignore at least the TWP amount of wages.
Earn 840 = get whole payment
Earn 1840 = get -500 less from SSA.
Note that this was required by Congress in the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 (Section 823). Name was legislatively chosen. Policy was legislatively chosen(more or less).
Instead, just make it illegal to work while on disability. Zero tolerance. Then, prosecute anyone who violates the rule. Shouldn't be a big deal right? I mean especially if everyone on benefits is too sick to work.
Beats the 100% tax they have on it now once you go over SGA.
It may not be perfect, but it is a step in the right direction encouraging people to try to get back in the workforce.
Ask one question.
Why would any ssdi/ssi beneficiary trust SSA and the republican controlled government?
Trump voters may trust such a demo project but democrats will not.
If SSA and republicans want to encourage effective work then supply government sponsored employers.
Here's my estimates and impressions from dealing with these folks for a long time. There is a pretty small group of people on disability who can do a little sporadic work, mostly less than SGA. Lets estimate it a 5%, which may be optimistic. Within the group, there is a subset of people who don't and/or cannot understand the complex work incentive programs. Anxiety over that lack of understanding, and true horror stories from the many people hit with enormous overpayments and/or who lost their benefits after they tried to work, keep many of them from even trying that bit of sporadic work they might be capable of (let's call that most of the five percent).
Then there is that tiny group who are disabled, can understand the complex work incentives, aren't scared of getting hit with big overpayments or losing their benefits, and can actually do a bit of work. I would be surprised if that was even 2% of beneficiaries. A proposal like the one in the post might interest and benefit those few people. Any expectation of a greater response is unrealistic.
I saw a lot of folks that went back to work at way above SGA when doing work CDRs. Also see quite a few folks that have a denied DIB claim from 5-20 years ago that returned to work and made quite a bit of money. If you don't count the stage IV cancer folks, paralyzed, ALS and similar, I'd bet the majority of people that had a decent job (say made $35-40K or more) do return to work and usually to something similar to what they received before. Attorneys may not see many of these folks because they file, are denied and go back to work soon after.
11:12 PM. What about those who were denied by ALJ and still can't work?
@11:12, stats show that very few denied applicants go back to work at anywhere near the SGA level. Table 5 here https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/workingpapers/wp104.html
shows that about half have no earnings in any of the 7 years after DI application. under 10% earn over $24,000 a year. these numbers are kind of old but it takes a while to get a data set to look back on and track people for a long period of time.
some folks can and do go back. But most are pretty sick and have limited ability to work. And a lot are old enough for early retirement benefits and use those instead.
I agree that some people are confused by the current work incentives and use fear of overpayments as a reason not to work or to limit work. Health is a bigger limiting factor though.
This is more evidence of how poorly the Republican congress has managed the program. They require this despite the fact that SSA has already tested this. It doesn't get more people to work, but does pay more in benefits. I can't see where this new project will succeed in getting DI beneficiaries back to work. Here is a link to the current SSA test of the issue, https://www.ssa.gov/disabilityresearch/offsetnational.htm
What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
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