SSA considers recipients’ resources when determining eligibility for SSI. While SSA generally excludes one vehicle per household from countable resources, additional vehicles may affect a recipient’s eligibility for SSI payments. SSA relies on recipients to report the vehicles they own and changes in vehicle ownership.

We reviewed 208 SSI recipients to determine whether recipients accurately reported their vehicle ownership to SSA and whether the Agency properly valued multiple vehicles when recipients reported owning more than one.

Of the 208 SSI recipients we reviewed, 154 (74 percent) accurately reported their vehicle ownership. However, public records indicated 54 recipients (26 percent) owned vehicles they did not report. For 8 recipients, the additional vehicles caused their countable resources to exceed SSI eligibility limits, resulting in $40,474 in payments for which they were ineligible. Based on our results, we estimate SSA overpaid approximately 660 recipients $435,000 because inaccurately reported vehicle ownership affected their SSI eligibility.

We also found SSA employees did not follow policy to determine the fair market value of vehicles for 24 of 48 recipientswho reported owning multiple vehicles. In 2 cases, inaccurate vehicle valuations caused recipients to exceed SSI resource limits, resulting in $24,618 in payments for which they were ineligible.

We made no formal recommendations for corrective action because the issues we identified did not affect SSI eligibility and associated payments in 198 (95 percent) of the 208 cases we reviewed.

However, SSA management should consider whether it is cost-beneficial to strengthen controls to ensure SSI resource determinations accurately reflect the vehicles recipients own and that SSA employees properly value vehicles.