CPR [Cross Program Recovery] is the process of collecting overpayments for one SSA-administered program by withholding the individual’s payable benefits from another SSA-administered program [recovering an SSI overpayment from regular Social Security benefits or vice versa]. ... The Agency can use CPR to withhold up to 10 percent of individuals’ OASDI [Old Age Survivors and Disability Insurance] monthly payments and either 100 percent of individuals’ SSI monthly payments or an amount that is 10 percent of their income, whichever is lower. ...
The Agency did not always use mandatory CPR to recover OASDI and SSI overpayments, as authorized under SSPA. ....
The Agency could have used mandatory CPR to collect $257,914 in OASDI overpayments from the SSI payments of 49 of the 50 individuals we reviewed. Based on our sample results, we estimate the Agency could have imposed mandatory CPR to collect about $52.9 million in OASDI overpayments from the SSI payments of the remaining 11,268 individuals we identified. ...
The Agency could have used mandatory CPR to collect $248,166 in SSI overpayments from the OASDI benefits of the 50 individuals we reviewed. Based on our sample results, we estimate the Agency could have imposed mandatory CPR to collect about $33.5 million in additional SSI overpayments from the OASDI benefits of the remaining 9,364 individuals we identified.
“Egregious employment tax noncompliance” by employers has risen substantially in recent years while the IRS’s ability to recover the lost revenues and investigate fraud and embezzlement has fallen, a report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) finds. More than 1 million employers owed over $45 billion in unpaid employment taxes as of December 2015, including interest and penalties. The report provides further evidence that the deep cuts to IRS funding since 2010 have weakened the agency’s ability to perform its core functions of collecting taxes and enforcing the nation’s tax laws.
This type of employer tax evasion is particularly harmful; it not only reduces federal revenues but it also hurts workers because employers often don’t report their earnings to the IRS and Social Security Administration. That makes it hard for employees and their families to claim the benefits they’ve earned when they retire, become disabled, or die and leave dependents behind. ...The "employment tax" they're talking about is F.I.C.A., the tax that goes to the Social Security trust funds.
Death information on CDPH [California Depart of Public Health] files was not always recorded on SSA records. At the time of our audit, SSA was issuing benefit payments to 83 individuals whose PII [Personally Identifiable Information] matched that of individuals who died in California from 1970 through 2004.There's a lot to notice here. Yes, benefits were being improperly being paid to at least 28 people. However, there were more cases where simple data matches indicated that a person was dead when they were actually alive. More aggressive use of data matches to cut off the benefits of dead people will inevitably cut off benefits to more people who aren't dead. That's a nightmare for the people whose benefits are cut off. Notice that sensationalist media may point to 188,000 people that Social Security doesn't know are dead without mentioning that none of them is being paid benefits.
We also identified approximately 188,000 numberholders who were likely deceased but had no death information on the Numident [Social Security records]. At the time of our review, none of these numberholders was receiving SSA payments. We provided SSA with the numberholders’ information, and SSA recorded death information on most of these record. ...
- In 34 cases, the beneficiaries were deceased. SSA terminated benefits to 28 beneficiaries and identified approximately $4.6 million in improper payments. SSA suspended payments to five beneficiaries but had not quantified the related improper payments. We estimate improper payments in these five cases totaled approximately $ 1.2 million. The remaining case did not involve improper payments.
- In 43 cases, the beneficiaries were alive. SSA and the Office of Investigations determined that none of the cases involved improper payments to the beneficiaries.
- In six cases, SSA was determining the beneficiaries’ status. The Office of Operations referred the cases to its regional offices for development.
