SSA Looks at When Income is Earned for SSDI

Of course SSA looks at gross monthly income when determining SGA for a person receiving SSDI. But did you know that SSA, for SSDI beneficiaries, looks at "when" that income was earned - not when that income was received?

This could prove to be very important when certain hours of a pay-period are carried over to the next month...there are irregular payment periods...or some other payment anomoly occurs.

Example:

If John earns $440 every two weeks, he would have a monthly gross wage of $953.48 - not $880. This is calculated by taking his bi-weekly pay and multiplying it by 2.167. If no other disregards are assessed other than the general...John would be performing SGA.

Because of the proximity to SGA in which John is working in the example above (just $3.48 above SGA) I would immediately look to see if any work incentives such as IRWE's or a Subsidy applies.

Often though when discussing bi-weekly pay it is on an hourly basis. This means that the first pay period and the second pay period differ.

Take holiday pay for example. Someone working retail over X-mas may put in a lot more hours towards the end of December than he/she would in some other month. If some of that extra time is paid out in Jan., then it would seem that the first check in Jan. would be abnormally large. But remember that SGA is determined by when the wage was "earned" - not paid out for SSDI.

In cases like that one needs to break down hourly each months wages to find an accurate monthly countable income.

That being said...if gross earnings total $800 or something that is not aproaching SGA - there is no need to do any calculations because it will not affect the SSDI benefit.




Any questions may be directed to: rsi5@srt.com