In January, former President Joe Biden signed into law the Social Security Fairness Act which resulted in increased benefits for a significant number of seniors across the country. If you are eligible for the increase and have not yet received it, what happens next?
The Social Security Administration has reported that 84% of the impacted beneficiaries have received their increased benefit amount — this is accurate as of May 2. This percentage makes up approximately 2.4 million people. As such, some seniors are now receiving a cash bump of as much as $1,100 to their monthly benefit check.
Social Security processing some claims manually
According to the agency’s report, the vast majority of seniors who were owed an increase as a result of the Social Security Fairness Act would have already seen an increase to their monthly benefit amounts. This process was streamlined because of the automated system used by the SSA. However, some cases are more complex and as such, cannot be adjusted easily using automation.
This means that employees working at the SSA will have manually update and adjust each of these complex cases.
“For the many complex cases that cannot be processed automatically, additional time is required to manually update the records and pay both retroactive benefits and the new benefits amount. We are expediting these cases now. We are releasing retroactive benefits and sending new monthly benefit amounts as we process each case, with the expectation that all beneficiary records will be updated by early November 2025,” as stated on the official Social Security Administration website.
Subsequently, if a beneficiary has not yet received their increase in April, they should continue to keep an eye out for a notice from the agency. This notice will outline when your benefit will be applied and the exact figure it will be increased by.
Additionally, the impacted seniors may also qualify for a once off retroactive payment that will be dated back to January 2024. Qualifying individuals may receive a lump sum amounting to the difference between what their benefit checks were and what they should have been under the new Fairness Act.
It has been reported that these retroactive payments have been slated to be sent out to all eligible beneficiaries by early November this year.
Not everyone will see a benefit increase under the new act
It should be noted that not all seniors will see an increase to their benefits as a result of the Social Security Fairness Act. The act is aimed at eliminating the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset, and according to the agency, these provisions eliminated or reduced the benefits for more than 2.8 million individuals.
The legislation impacted people who received a pension based on work that had not been covered by Social Security since they were not paying Social Security taxes. Subsequently, some of the following workers will now see an increase to their benefits:
- Teachers, firefighters and police officers in several states
- Federal employees covered by the Civil Service Retirement System
- People whose work was covered by a foreign social security system
Not all of the aforementioned employees will qualify for the increase, however. This is because “around 72% of state and local public employees were not affected by the Windfall Elimination Provision or the Government Pension Offset,” according to the SSA.
Despite the fact that this act is making right a disparity, many advocates feel that it will put a strain on the Social Security Trust Fund. Furthermore, critics also fear that funds will be depleted sooner than the original estimates of 2035.
At a signing ceremony at the White House in January, former President Joe Biden said, “The bill I’m signing is about a simple proposition: Americans who have worked hard all their life to earn an honest living should be able to retire with economic security and dignity — that’s the entire purpose of the Social Security system. This is a big deal.”