Wage Reporting
Background
Changes in the amount of wages an SSI recipient or others in the household receive may affect the recipient’s payment or eligibility. SSI recipients must report their own wages and the wages of others in the household whose incomes we consider in determining the SSI payments.
Examples of our corrective actions to address the root causes of wage-related errors include options for recipients (or representative payees on their behalf) or their deemors to self-report wages via telephone or a smartphone application. Beginning October 2013, recipients, representative payees, and deemors were able to use those automated reporting tools to report prior monthly wage amounts anytime during the current month.
- SSI Telephone Wage Reporting System (SSITWR)
- In FY 2008, we implemented SSITWR, which allows recipients, representative payees, and deemors to report prior monthly gross wages via an automated telephone system. SSITWR ensures we post the wage amounts to the individual’s record in a timely manner.
- SSI Mobile Wage Reporting Smartphone Application
- Beginning in December 2012, 50 field offices across all 10 regions began a pilot project for mobile wage reporting. This initiative allowed SSI recipients, representative payees, and deemors to use their smartphones to report a prior month’s gross wages, using an application they can download at no cost from the Google Play and Apple App stores. The initial pilot was successful, and we expanded it to nearly 270 participating field offices in March 2013. The expanded phase of the pilot was successful as well, with more than 9,000 wage reports submitted using the smartphone application during the entire pilot. We rolled out the initiative nationally on August 1, 2013, following the release of some minor system improvements made as the result of feedback received during the pilot.
- Automated Reminder
- In September 2013, we implemented an automated SSI wage reporting reminder using GovDelivery. Individuals can voluntarily sign up to receive a monthly email or text message reminder to report wages for the prior month.
We continue to successfully increase the number of wage reports SSI recipients submit using our automated SSI wage reporting systems. In FY 2016 we processed 896,488 successful automated wage reports in time to prevent improper payments.