Supplemental Security Income Recipients Eligible for, or Receiving, Pensions from China
- Audit report number
- A-01-16-50011
- Management challenge
- Improve the Prevention, Detection, and Recovery of Improper Payments
- Full report
- /~assets/audits/full/a-01-16-50011.pdf
- Summary report
- /~assets/audits/summary/summary-50011.pdf
Our objective was to identify Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients who were eligible for, or receiving, pensions from China and who may have therefore been overpaid.
Since SSI is a program based on financial need and the payer of last resort, SSI recipients must apply for all other available sources of income to remain eligible. This includes foreign-based pensions.
Foreign pension-paying entities that pay income to persons living in the United States do not usually make the income information available to the Internal Revenue Service. Therefore, SSA relies on recipients to self-report the information. Additionally, pensions from China may be payable to individuals who have 15 years of work in China, even though the individuals reside in the United States.
We identified 29,361 SSI recipients who may have been eligible for, or receiving, a pension from China. We selected a random sample of 200 recipients from this population for review.
