- [Sarah] Welcome to Managing an Overpayment with the Social Security Administration. From the National Disability Institute, my name is Sarah Loizeaux. Once you begin receiving monthly disability benefits from the Social Security Administration it is possible that you may be overpaid. Overpayments occur for a variety of reasons. They commonly occur because SSA was either not notified of a change in your financial situation or they did not take timely action on a reported change, such as a change in your wages. So what is an overpayment? An overpayment is the total amount received from SSA for any time period which exceeded the total amount that SSA should have paid during that month. You have options. SSA will notify you in writing that you have been overpaid. The letter will give you options for repaying. If you do not agree that you have been overpaid or if you think that the amount is incorrect, you may ask for a reconsideration, a waiver, or both. Let's take a look at those options now. Option one: Request for a change in the Overpayment Recovery Rate. If you agree that you've been paid too much, that the overpayment amount is correct, and you are willing to pay it back, but cannot afford to pay it back at the rate stated in the letter from SSA, you can file form SSA-634: Request for Change in Overpayment Recovery Rate. You can find the link at https://www.ssa.gov/forms/ssa-634.pdf. Option two: Request for a Reconsideration of the Overpayment. If you do not agree that you have been overpaid, or if you believe the amount is incorrect, you can appeal by using form SSA-561: Request for Reconsideration. Be sure to explain why you think you have not been overpaid or why you think the amount is incorrect. You can find the link for SSA form 561 at https://www.ssa.gov/forms/ssa-561.pdf. Option three: Request for a Waiver for the Overpayment. If you agree that you have been overpaid, but you feel you should not have to pay it back because you did not cause the overpayment and you cannot afford to repay it, you can file form SSA-632: Request for Waiver Overpayment Recovery. And you can find the form for SSA-632 at the following link: https://www.ssa.gov/forms/ssa-632-bk.pdf. I'd like to share with you a few recommendations to avoid an overpayment. So, to avoid an overpayment, the most important things you can do are: One: Understand your benefits and reporting requirements. Two: Report changes in your wages or in your employment situation to SSA in a timely manner to avoid an overpayment of benefits. Keep records of discussions with SSA, specifically with whom you spoke and when. Three: When you report work wages, always obtain a receipt no matter how you report them; mail, fax, in-person, online. If you have questions, call Social Security toll-free at 1-800-772-1213 between 8:00 o'clock a.m. through 7:00 o'clock p.m. Eastern time, Monday through Friday. If you're deaf or hard of hearing and use TTY equipment, call SSA's TTY number at 1-800-325-0778. You can also find the phone number to your local office using SSA's office locator. The website is: https://secure.ssa.gov/ICON/main.jsp. Thank you for your time and attention today. To learn more about reporting wages in order to avoid an overpayment, visit: https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10098.pdf. There you will find Social Security Administration's PDF Guide on Overpayments.