Recovering Title II Overpayments Made to Childhood Beneficiaries

This report provides information on the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) recovery of Title II overpayments made to childhood beneficiaries and the individuals responsible for repaying the debt.

In July 2015, we reported on SSA’s collection of Federal debt that was delinquent 10 years or longer. We also discussed that some of these debts belonged to former childhood beneficiaries who protested the withholding of their Federal and State income tax refund to recover a delinquent SSA debt 10-years-old and older. The former childhood beneficiaries stated they did not directly receive the overpaid benefits because they were minors who received auxiliary benefits on a parent’s record. A childhood beneficiary also questioned why SSA selected only certain individuals for an income tax withholding when there were multiple auxiliaries on a benefit record. Our prior review found that SSA correctly selected and properly referred the debts to the Department of the Treasury, as allowed under laws and regulations. We also found that SSA selected only qualified debts.

For this review, we identified 76,984 Title II childhood beneficiaries for whom SSA established 113,633 overpayment events when they were minors—under age 18. SSA established these overpayment events between June 1993 and September 2015.

Read the full report

Read the summary report