A Social Security Administration inspector general report from August 2024 estimated that SSA made nearly $72 billion in improper payments between fiscal years 2015 and 2022, most of them overpayments, and found that many of the office's earlier recommendations to prevent and recover those payments had gone unimplemented. The report also noted roughly $23 billion in uncollected overpayment balances owed to the agency.
What did the report find?
The IG found SSA lacked a complete picture of its overpayment problem: the agency did not consistently track the causes of overpayments or measure whether its prevention efforts worked. Follow-on work in March 2025 examined one leading cause in detail — beneficiaries who do not report changes in income, living arrangements, or marital status on time. SSA has attributed the large majority of overpayments in its main disability and retirement programs to untimely or missing self-reporting of such changes.
Recovery itself is costly. Separate IG audits have found that SSA sometimes spends more to pursue a small overpayment than it recovers — one cited example found the agency spent about $14,492 in staff time to recover $8,129.
How did the agency respond?
SSA agreed with the IG's recommendations to improve cause tracking, debt management, and reporting, and the agency has been implementing changes. In March 2025 SSA also revised its repayment policy, ending a prior practice of withholding only 10 percent of a beneficiary's monthly check to recover an overpayment — a change that restores full-benefit withholding in many cases and has drawn attention because of its effect on low-income beneficiaries who dispute the debt.
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What happens next?
The inspector general continues to audit overpayment causes and recovery practices, and Congress monitors whether SSA implements the outstanding recommendations. Beneficiaries who receive an overpayment notice have appeal and waiver rights, including a waiver when they were not at fault and recovery would deprive them of income needed for living expenses.
What it means for you
If you receive Social Security or Supplemental Security Income, the findings point to the practical fix: report any change in income, resources, or living situation to SSA as soon as it happens, and keep records of when and how you reported. Timely reporting prevents most overpayments from building up — and prevents repayment demands years later. If you get an overpayment notice, you can request reconsideration or a waiver, and the IG's findings about recovery costs and notice accuracy are part of why those rights exist.
The inspector general's office has made overpayment prevention and debt management a standing audit priority, and its follow-up work checks whether SSA acts on recommendations that remain open. That tracking matters because the 2024 report's central criticism was not that overpayments occur — any benefits agency will have some — but that SSA could not show whether its own prevention programs reduced them over time.