When the Social Security Assistants approves your awarding to receive Social Security Disability Benefit payments, you will receive a Social Security Benefits Accolade Letter of the alphabet, which usually arrives betwixt 1-3 months later on the determination. This benefit verification alphabetic character will provide some basic information virtually the terms of your SSDI or SSI payments.

Social Security Honour Letter Information

  • Benefit amounts
  • Monthly payment dates
  • Back pay amounts
  • Back pay dates
  • Amounts owed to representatives
  • Taxability of your benefits

Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) is sometimes confused with Supplemental Security Insurance (SSI). SSI provides cash assistance for bones needs like habiliment, food, and shelter for individuals with lilliputian to no income. Usually, these individuals are dumb, disabled, or accept reached total retirement age. Well-nigh Americans over the age of 65 practise collect some form of Social Security, though some will choose to defer it to a afterward engagement in lodge to increase the size of their monthly benefit payment.

SSDI is a different program to aid cover the cost of living for individuals who have a disabling medical condition that will eventually result in decease or that will go along them out of work for at least one yr...though information technology is also meant to cover basic expenses and medical expenses.

While SSI is funded by taxpayers collectively and individuals can collect information technology regardless of work history, SSDI operates along the lines of a complex credit arrangement that factors in years of previous work experience. Whether you lot're applying for SSI or SSDI, if your application is approved, you'll get a letter in the mail from the Department of Social Security, otherwise known as the Social Security Administration (SSA).

What is a Social Security Award Letter?

If your eligibility to receive social security income has been confirmed, you lot will generally receive your benefit verification letter one to 3 months after a decision is made past the social security office. Just according to the SSA itself, a decision takes 3-5 months. That said, you lot may not go a letter in the mail for as long as eight months later y'all've applied. Fifty-fifty if y'all get i sooner than that, the quickest you should expect your Social Security Award Letter is around four months.

The good news is that yous can cut that time in half by starting your application online, at least according to the SSA. Starting your application online volition allow you to fill out both the benefits awarding and the disability worksheet (if you are applying for SSDI). Yous will withal have an in-person or phone date which will generally last around one hour. If the SSA requests whatever documents to verify your identity or condition, you should exist sure to bring those to the date, or your local social security function if you have a phone appointment, to avoid the adventure of slowing downwardly the process.

6 Things Included in a Social Security Honour Letter

1. Benefit Amounts

Do good amounts will be listed in your Social Security Honor Letter of the alphabet. To determine this amount, the SSA will take into consideration your highest earning years in a 35-year time span, and separate those average annual earnings by 12 months to find the Average Indexed Monthly Earnings. The SSA will have 90% of your AIME nether $960, 32% of everything earned over $960 and under $5,785, and fifteen% of anything beyond that. This gives the SSA a flick of your earning potential and allows them to summate the Principal Insurance Amount (PIA) that will be paid to you each month. Note that the SSA does adjust your AIME for inflation.

2. Monthly Payment Dates

Monthly payment dates will be listed on the letter that let you know when your benefits will be issued. At the time of your application, you would have been asked about your preferred method of receiving your benefits, which included options for Straight Deposit into a bank account, a Direct Express debit card issued past the SSA, or having them sent into an Electronic Transfer Account. Payment dates will be unlike for every person, and then it's a good idea to brand note of when your payment date is so you can programme out paying your monthly bills, rent, or mortgage. Keep in listen that if you are applying for SSDI, it will take payments a mandatory v months to start existence issued.

iii. Back Pay Amounts

Back benefits owed to an SSI recipient or SSDI benefits recipient pay will be listed on their Social Security Award Alphabetic character as well. These past-due benefits will depend on how long your application took to process and the PIA calculated by the SSA, which again varies from person to person. While SSI recipients will generally non get their dorsum payment in 1 lump sum, SSDI recipients will. Yous are required to have a bank account to receive these payments considering the SSA only issues them through straight deposit.

4. Back Pay Dates

Back pay dates may be listed on your Social Security Honour Alphabetic character if y'all applied for SSI because SSI back payments are issued as three split payments separated by six-month increments. By contrast, SSDI dorsum pay is ordinarily issued as i lump sum inside lx days of approval. SSI back payment installations are divide up because the starting time two cannot be larger than three times your monthly benefit amount, though at that place are no such limitations on the third back payment installment.

five. Amounts Owed to Representatives

Amounts owed to whatsoever representative payee volition besides be listed. You lot do not accept to elect a representative to receive your benefits payments and manage them, only if you lot indicated that you would like that on your application, this private carries the fiduciary responsibility for managing your benefit payments.

Your representative will be required to fill out an annual report to rails expenses and help the SSA make sure that benefit payments are existence used for the care of the intended recipient. If you worked with a lawyer to file your application, the attorney will usually receive 25% of your back pay, but no more than than $vi,000.

6. Taxability of Your Benefits

The taxability of your benefits may also be listed. SSI benefit payments are never taxable. They were, subsequently all, funded by social security taxes. SSDI benefits, past contrast, may exist taxable, but in well-nigh cases, they will not exist subject to that tax. If your benefits are under $25,000 for an private and $32,000 for a married couple filing jointly, your income is not taxable. If you are receiving more than that, roughly 50% of it will be taxable. Take annotation that lump sum dorsum payments could drive upward your income and get in subject to taxation.

seven. How to Get a Copy of Your Social Security Award Letter

The social security award letter volition be delivered to the applicant, so yous volition not need to go out of your way to specifically request a re-create. Yet, it is a good thought to call and check on the status of your application. In checking, remember that the telephone representative will most likely not be able to tell you whatsoever details about the decision, just they may be able to confirm for you that it has been mailed out.

Remember that it will take some time (again, as long as up to four months) for your SSA benefits letter to be received. Proceed in mind that this letter tin only get to the address associated with your social security number, so you cannot appoint someone else to receive it. Should you require additional copies of your letter, yous can request them online from the SSA via the "my Social Security" account portal.

This letter volition alternatively be called a upkeep letter of the alphabet, benefits alphabetic character, proof of income letter, or proof of honor letter. If y'all have specifically practical for a inability payment, yous might refer to information technology as a disability laurels alphabetic character. Continue in heed that this benefit verification letter is not the aforementioned thing as the social security statement that reflects the estimated benefit your social security business relationship will provide you lot upon retirement. Keep your alphabetic character in a safe merely accessible identify—peradventure in the same place yous keep proof of your Medicare benefits and your social security bill of fare.

What If I Disagree with My Award Letter of the alphabet?

If you disagree with any part of your letter, you need to human activity quickly and file an entreatment. These disagreements might exist more than common amongst those who have filed a disability claim, but even those waiting to get a social security retirement benefit tin find something to contest, especially if they were expecting a higher benefit corporeality.

You have 60 days to file this appeal online by filing a claim in writing or filling out Form SSA 561 (Request for Reconsideration) or a Form SSA-789 (Request for Reconsideration Disability Cessation). Those lx days brainstorm five days after the date of your letter of the alphabet. If you lot are receiving SSI, you should file these forms or write this letter inside 10 days, so you tin continue to receive any benefits that will be awarded to y'all as your appeal is pending.

The SSA volition send you a written re-determination. Should you disagree with that, you can request a face-to-face hearing in forepart of an administrative law judge (ALJ) past writing to the SSA directly or by completing a Form HA–501 (a Asking for Hearing by Administrative Law Judge). Over again, you have lx days to file such a request by sending information technology in writing, filling out the forms, or filing information technology online. You practice not have to appear before an ALJ, only you can elect to accept them review the case in your absence.

If you choose to have your case reviewed in person, you must announced before the guess for that meeting or abolish it five days in advance. On occasion, a judge will allow for teleconferencing or a phone telephone call, but generally, the SSA will determine the means of meeting. The SSA may embrace your travel expenses if you lot should demand to travel more 75 miles, and then if that applies to your situation, be sure to look into it. The ALJ may ask you to complete medical examinations or tests to decide the validity of your claim, along with summoning witnesses and requesting written evidence such as medical records.

If you applied for SSDI, you may disagree with the date that the SSA believes you lot became disabled, too chosen the Established Onset Engagement or EOD. The default of this date is when you applied for benefits, which is one reason you practise not desire to wait around and run across if an extant condition gets better before applying for SSDI. An attorney tin help you claiming this engagement and obtain retroactive payments.

Retroactive payments are different from back payments, equally back payments are those payments calculated from the fourth dimension of your application, whereas retroactive payments are calculated back to the time of the onset of your disability. But go along in mind that the SSA will only consequence retroactive payments from 12 months prior to your awarding for Social Security Disability.

Social Security Accolade Alphabetic character

The Supplemental Security Income and Social Security Disability Awarding tin can be daunting, and the expect time for your letters may seem particularly long. You can speed up the process by applying as shortly as y'all tin and providing all the necessary documentation to the SSA before they need to ask you for it twice.

Make sure you show upward to all your appointments, and if you feel the need to appeal the conclusion about your benefits, exercise so equally chop-chop as possible. One time y'all receive your social security award letter, keep it in a condom place and practice not throw it out, in instance you lot demand to reference it for any disputes about your disability payment or retirement benefits.