I always encourage everyone who has yet to claim social security benefits to check their SSA statement at least annually to make sure earnings have been properly credited. Now, there's another very important reason to check this information. Crooks are filing bogus claims for benefits.
Last week, the Social Security Administration released another audit report explaining how some widows have been underpaid benefits. This is in addition to the errors disclosed last year affecting widows that we wrote about in Social Security Short-Changes 100,000+ Widows. The latest report concerns widows that are dually entitled to a retirement benefit and a survivor benefit.
A recent audit report of the Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector General estimates that the SSA has underpaid 110,000 widow(er)s $285 million. While SSA is working to correct the 101 widow(er)s that were actually discovered in their sampling of 200, it is unclear how others affected by this error will be identified and corrected.
Social Security benefit claiming strategies continue to perplex much of the working public. Adding to the confusion are changes in late 2015, so let’s address those changes, hopefully in a straightforward, easy to understand format as possible given the subject. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 affected two primary areas of Social Security benefits.