SSA uses earnings alerts to identify discrepancies between the wages SSI recipients report and earnings information provided by the Internal Revenue Service or state agencies. Resolving these alerts helps SSA ensure recipients receive the correct SSI payments and identify and recover overpayments.

We reviewed a random sample of 100 recipients from the 417,291 SSI recipients who had at least one pending earnings alert as of September 2024. 

SSA did not appropriately resolve earnings alerts for 80 of the 100 SSI recipients we reviewed. For 63 recipients, employees either did not start or complete their reviews of earnings alerts. For another 17 recipients, employees cleared the alerts but did not verify and record all earnings that affected SSI payment amounts.

Based on our sample results, we estimate SSA paid approximately 333,800 recipients about $1 billion they would not have been eligible to receive had SSA properly considered and fully developed their unreported earnings. Because of SSA’s administrative finality policy, the Agency will be unable to recover approximately $664 million of these payments, absent a determination of fraud or similar fault. SSA should be able to take corrective action on the remaining approximately $344 million.

We made three recommendations for SSA to review and take corrective action on errors our audit identified, identify the factors contributing to employees not diligently pursuing earnings alerts or not accurately resolving them, and implement appropriate corrective action.

SSA agreed to implement our recommendations.