Social Security’s inspector general pulled 126 overpayment notices and found that 58 of them did not meet the agency’s own rules. In 8 of those 58 cases, the auditors found no evidence that Social Security had issued a notice to the person who owed the money at all.
What the auditors checked
The review came from the Office of Audit at the Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector General. Its report, titled Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance Overpayment Notices, covers overpayments established in fiscal year 2023. It was addressed to Commissioner Frank Bisignano, and Assistant Inspector General Michelle L. Anderson signed it.
OASDI stands for Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance, the programs that pay monthly retirement, survivor and disability benefits. The review ran from September 2024 through July 2026 and asked whether Social Security issued overpayment notices according to its own policy.
Auditors drew a sample of 126 overpayments from 50,948. Of those, 68 notices, or 54%, complied with policy and 58, or 46%, did not. The report says that in 8 of the 58, or 6% of the sample, there was no evidence a notice was issued to the beneficiary liable for the debt.
For a beneficiary, the practical stake is the response clock. Social Security’s overpayment page says the agency waits at least 30 days after sending a notice before it collects, and that a waiver request or appeal inside the 30 days pauses collection. Someone who sees a check shrink with no letter in hand can contact Social Security, ask for the notice, and ask about a waiver or an appeal.
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The sample counts are the auditors’ own tally of cases they reviewed. They are not a prediction that 8 of every 126 beneficiaries never get a notice.
The counts nest inside one another. The 8 cases with no sign of a notice are part of the 58 that missed policy, and the 58 are part of the 126 sampled. In round terms, 6% of the sample had no evidence of a notice, and 46% fell short of policy in one way or another.
Where the notices fell short
Missing notices were the smallest group. The report found 30 notices that left out information the policy requires about how and when the overpayment happened, 16 of them prepared by hand and 14 produced by Social Security’s systems. That group included notices missing the language about the right to ask for reconsideration or a waiver.
Another 26 notices carried inaccurate or conflicting information, 6 of them manual and 20 system-generated. Eleven of the system-generated notices had conflicting language in the explanation or in the calculation charts. The auditors counted cases by type, and one notice could have more than one flaw.
The estimate, the follow-up review and Social Security’s answer
The inspector general also projected the sample to the whole year. At a 90% confidence level, the auditors estimate Social Security did not issue policy-compliant notices for about 469,040 of roughly 1,018,960 overpayments in fiscal year 2023. That figure is the auditors’ estimate, not a count.
Dollar amounts are not part of the report. It does not say how much money was collected or withheld from beneficiaries who got a flawed notice. Its measure is whether the notice met policy, not what happened to any one person’s check.
A second part of the review looked at 125 cases where a beneficiary had asked for an explanation of an overpayment. The report found 79 of them, or 63%, were handled incorrectly. In 56 cases a code meant to flag an explanation request was used to suspend collection. As of June 2026, 11 requests had stayed unresolved for more than 900 days.
Another 8 of the explanation notices were deficient, and 22 cases lacked required documentation. The report says Social Security has no standard timeframe for resolving these requests, so the 900-day wait was not a policy violation. It also points to a September 2025 report, number 072301, that found similar problems.
The inspector general made six recommendations, covering templates, error checks, system-generated notices and recordkeeping. The report lists them as follows.
- Require employees to use templates to prepare overpayment notices when possible
- Add controls that alert employees to potential errors before a manually prepared notice goes out
- Review and update system-generated notices so they include the required information and stay consistent
- Add controls so employees use the explanation request indicator correctly
- Add controls so employees complete the remark screen in the overpayment system according to policy
- Clarify what employees must record when they document explanation requests
In the report’s words, “SSA agreed to implement our recommendations.” The auditors asked for a corrective action plan within 60 days of the memo.
What remains open for beneficiaries is whether the fixes reach the notices already sent. The report covers fiscal year 2023 overpayments, and the follow-up plan is still due from the agency.
Never got the overpayment notice before the money was taken?
A check that shrinks with no letter behind it leaves a person guessing about the waiver and appeal clocks, and a missed 30-day window is the costly mistake.
The Social Security Check Protection Kit includes the three SSA forms that stop or pause collection (SSA-561, SSA-632, SSA-634) and an overpayment response worksheet, so a response is ready the day a notice turns up, or the day someone asks for it.
Part 5 is the full overpayments playbook, and the kit also carries a first-24-hours plan for a late or missing payment.
Get the waiver and appeal forms for a missing notice in the Check Protection Kit →
More Financial Reading
- 21 Ways to Stretch a $2,087 Social Security Check
- 15 Places to Find Your Share of the $4.25 Billion States Give Back
- 17 Medicare Money Moves Now That Part D Caps at $2,400
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
