If you receive benefits from the Social Security Administration, such as retirement or Supplemental Security Income (SSI), you should report any changes to your personal information to the authorities.
If there are differences between your personal information and Social Security’s system, you may have problems keeping your payments up to date.
What changes must you report to Social Security?
According to the official website, these are the changes you must report if you receive SSI payments and want to continue receiving them:
- Change of address.
- Change in living arrangements.
- Change in earned and unearned income, including a change in wages or net earnings from self-employment, including your spouse’s income if you are married and living together, and parents’ income if applying for a child.
- Change in resources, including your spouse’s resources if you are married and living together, and parents’ resources if applying for a child. You must report if you obtain new resources, sell or transfer existing resources, or if the value of a resource changes.
- Death of spouse or anyone in your household.
- Change in marital status.
- Change in citizenship or immigration status.
- Change in help with living expenses from friends or relatives.
- Eligibility for other benefits or payments.
- Admission to or discharge from an institution (such as a hospital, nursing home, or a correctional institution such as a prison, jail, detention center, boot camp, etc.).
- Change in school attendance if you are under the age of 22.
- Change in lawful noncitizen status.
- Sponsor (or sponsor’s spouse) changes of income, resources, or living arrangement for noncitizens.
- Leaving the U.S. for a full calendar month or for 30 consecutive days or more.
- An unsatisfied felony or arrest warrant for escape from custody, flight to avoid prosecution or confinement, or flight-escape.
How much time do you have to report?
If you have new information that can affect the consistency of your payments, it is recommended to report these changes as soon as possible and no later than 10 days after the end of the month in which the change occurred.
The Social Security Administration informs that if you do not do this, you will be underpaid and will not receive the benefits.
At the same time, it is possible that the administration overpay you and you will have to pay them back. They may apply a penalty that will reduce your SSI payment by $25 to $100 for each time you fail to report a change to us, or you report the change later than 10 days after the end of the month in which the change occurred.