In August of 2019, I will begin my retirement from Social Security. After analyzing my entry record, I found a very serious mistake. It appears that I started working when I was still in high school in 1971. I graduated from high school in 1973 and I never worked during my time in high school. Because I had had an earning in 1971 (something that isn’t true), then zeros appeared in 1972 and 1973. In 1973 I started College and I worked there in a program of study and work in 1974. Then, I graduated from College in 1975 and immediately started to work. My question is, would be possible to eliminate the income of 1971 and the zeros of 1972 and 1973? My record should have started in 1974 to 2019. When I called and went to the local SS office, they can change the 1971 income to zero, but still it’s going to show three years with zeros, and this is not true. When they calculated my monthly benefit, they eliminated the income of the lowest 5 years, and in there are included the 1971-73, three years that I never worked. What I should do?

Hi,

If you didn't have any Social Security covered earnings in 1972 & 1973, then your earnings record should show zeros. It wouldn't make any difference at all in your benefit rate if those zeros were replaced with a blank space. Removal of the earnings posted to your record in 1971 could potentially lower your benefit rate, though, but only if the amount of earnings posted to your record for that year is high enough to put it among your highest 35 years of Social Security covered earnings. Before asking Social Security to remove those earnings, you should make very sure that the earnings aren't from your past work that you may have forgotten. Social Security can tell you the name of the employer that reported those earnings, so you should at least have them tell you that before disclaiming the earnings.

Social Security will calculate your Social Security retirement benefit rate based on an average of your highest 35 years of wage indexed earnings (https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10070.pdf). They don't merely drop the lowest 5 years of earnings and average the remainder. For example, if you only had 25 years of Social Security covered earnings then Social Security wouldn't drop any years and would include 10 zero earnings years in the average. Conversely, if you had 45 years of Social Security covered earnings then Social Security would use an average of the highest 35 of those years to calculate your benefit rate, and they would disregard the other 10 years with lower earnings.

Based on your description of your earnings history it sounds like you had substantially more than 35 years of earnings on which you paid Social Security taxes. Therefore, as long as the 1971 earnings that you believe were erroneously credited to your record aren't high enough to be among your 35 highest earnings years, then you really wouldn't need to do anything. In that case, Social Security simply won't use the years that you're worried about in the calculation of your benefit rate.

I doubt if you have any cause for concern, but you may want to use the benefit calculator in our software (https://maximizemysocialsecurity.com/purchase) to determine which years will be used in calculating your benefit rate. The software would also allow you to explore and compare your various filing options so that you can determine your best strategy for claiming your benefits.

Best, Jerry