By Alex Moore
Getting overpaid on your Social Security benefits might sound like a nice surprise, but it can create a challenging situation. Even if you didn’t notice the overpayment, you’re on the hook to return the money. After the Social Security Administration realizes what happened and notifies you, you only have 90 days to file a waiver before the agency starts withholding money from your monthly benefit checks to claw back the overpayment.
Until just a few years ago, the default withholding rate—the percentage of your benefit checks that SSA would withhold until it recovered its overpaid funds—was 100 percent. The Biden administration lowered that figure to just 10 percent in 2022, providing relief to seniors, but the new Trump administration has brought about even more change. It initially returned the default withholding rate all the way to 100 percent in March, before lowering it to 50 percent again in April following public backlash.
While a 50 percent withholding rate might sound fair, in practice, it can be a brutal policy for seniors.
Take a couple in West Palm Beach, Florida, for example. In 2024, Kat Conner and Jim Lehfeldt told their local NBC station that the SSA had notified them that they had been overpaid by approximately $81,000 over four years, even though they hadn’t realized it. Under the new policy, the couple will only receive 50 percent of their monthly benefit checks until the outstanding amount is repaid. If we assume a typical baseline benefit check of $2,000 (mostly because it makes the math easy, but also a realistic number), it means the couple is losing out on basically $1,000 of income per month. That’s a life-changing amount of money.
While we at TSCL understand that the SSA needs to recover overpayments, we’re calling for new policies that don’t punish seniors for the government’s mistakes. Our first preference would obviously be to eliminate Social Security overpayments entirely, rendering the problem moot. However, that’s unlikely, so we’re calling on the Presidential administration and Congress to show mercy by not just lowering the default withholding rate, but extending the period before withholding begins from 90 days to 180 days so seniors have time to make contingency plans.
So, what can you do to prevent yourself from receiving overpayments from Social Security and having future benefits withheld to make up the difference? According to the SSA, the most important step you can take is reporting any major life changes, such as changes to your income, resources, and living arrangements, to the agency as soon as possible. This helps ensure the agency can accurately input your information into its benefits formula and, by extension, make accurate payments.
